RGS

Biography

Biography

Dr Shivanand Hegde obtained his bachelor’s degree (BSc) in Chemistry, Physics and Mathematics and master’s degree (MSc) in Biochemistry from Karnatak University, Dharwad, India. During 2007-2009, Dr Hegde worked at Indian Institute of Science (IISc), a premier research institution in India, as a research assistant on the project characterizing the topoisomerase I enzyme from Mycobacterium smegmatis. During his time at IISc, Dr Hegde became interested in studying host-microbe interactions and decided to pursue PhD in microbial pathogenesis. He joined Prof. Renate Rosengarten laboratory at University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna, Austria for PhD studies. During PhD, he studied molecular pathogenesis of Mycoplasma agalactiae (MA), a pathogen of sheep and goats. Dr Hegde was the first to show invasion and intracellular replication of MA both in vitro and in vivo systems (Hegde et al., 2014). He also identified key genetic factors involved in the colonization and systemic spreading of MA in the sheep intramammary infection model (Hegde et al, 2015, Hegde et al., 2017). Dr Hegde characterized a pdhA mutant of MA to show its moonlighting function in the pathogenesis.

After his PhD, Dr Hegde joined Dr Grant Hughes laboratory at University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, Texas USA as a postdoctoral fellow. Here, he continued his research on the host-microbe interactions in mosquitoes and completed projects on mosquito gut epithelium invasion of symbiotic bacteria, microbe-microbe interactions, and mosquito response to Zika virus (ZIKV) infection. Dr Hegde’s research has uncovered invasion of gut symbionts in the mosquito cells and their ability to interfere with the replication of ZIKV and Chikungunya virus (Hegde et al., 2020). Focussing on the factors shaping the microbiome, Dr Hegde’s work showed complex inter-microbial interactions in mosquitoes using high throughput sequencing and, he validated interactions using a mono-association infection model (Hegde et al., 2018, Kozlova and Hegde et al., 2021). Dr Hegde’s research interest expands into developing novel approaches to study host-microbe interactions. Using the CRISPR Cas9 editing approach, Dr Hegde successfully engineered the mosquito symbiont genomes and completed stable integration of foreign genes into the bacterial genome (Hegde et al., 2019). Utilizing gnotobiotic rearing technique, Dr Hegde and colleagues developed a novel microbiome transplantation method to achieve interspecies microbiome transfer in mosquitoes (Coon and Hegde et al., 2022).

In October 2022, Dr Hegde joined the School of Life Sciences at Keele University as a Lecturer in Infectious Diseases. His research at Keele aims to investigate the molecular mechanism of tripartite interactions between the mosquitoes, their microbiome, and pathogens they transmit. Dr Hegde’s research uses wide range of techniques in molecular biology, virology, microbial ecology, vector biology, and bioinformatics to identify the factors shaping the microbiome assembly, molecular mechanisms of arboviruses and host interaction in the mosquito gut, and evolution of microbial communities in the mosquito gut. The outcome of Dr Hegde’s research would be valuable in developing next generation vector control approaches to reduce the burden of mosquito borne diseases.

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School of Life Sciences,
Huxley Building,
Keele University,
Staffordshire,
ST5 5BG
Tel: +44 (0) 1782 734414