Douglas LaCount

Title:

Associate Professor

PhD Granting Institution:

University of Wisconsin - Madison

Contact:

Email Address: dlacount@purdue.edu
Office Phone: 765-496-7835

Primary Training Group:

Microbiology, Immunology and Infectious Diseases

Secondary Training Groups:

Integrative Neuroscience

Research Areas:

The central theme of my research program is the discovery and characterization of protein interaction networks between intracellular pathogens and their host cells. We seek to understand how intracellular pathogens manipulate host cells, how host cells respond to intracellular pathogens, and how this information can be exploited to develop new antimicrobial or antiviral drugs. We are interested in developing new host-pathogen protein interaction networks, comparing host-pathogen interaction networks from different organisms, and performing in-depth analyses of the roles of host proteins in virus and parasite lifecycles. Our research primarily focuses on two mosquito-transmitted pathogens that are major global health problems: the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum and dengue virus.