Kelsey Dahlgren

The goal of my research is to identify factors involved in the survival and adaption of Toxoplasma gondii to different oxygen concentrations. Toxoplasma gondii is an obligate intracellular parasite that is estimated to infect more than 30 million people in the United States. Toxoplasma’s ubiquity in the population can be attributed to its ability to infect virtually any nucleated cell in warm-blooded animals. However, to infect and survive in diverse cell types and tissues, Toxoplasma must adapt to different environments. My research focuses on how Toxoplasma senses and responds to changing oxygen levels.

To identify factors involved in Toxoplasma’s survival in and adaption to different oxygen concentrations, I am performing different types of experimental screens. This includes CRISPR library screens to identify genes that are essential at low oxygen. Additionally, I am working to identify effector proteins downstream of the Toxoplasma proteins that sense oxygen concentration, PhyA and PhyB. With the results from these experiments, we can better understand how Toxoplasma adapts to different oxygen concentrations, which could be used to identify novel drug targets in the future. 

• Ira J. Blader, PhD

• PhD, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, USA
• BS, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities, Minneapolis, US