Welcome to the Rubin Lab

Tuberculosis kills 1.5 million people every year. Despite over a century of research on the causative organism, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, we still have an incomplete understanding of tuberculous infections. Our goal is to better understand the basic biology of this pathogen and how it causes disease, in order to develop new therapeutic strategies.

Our research focuses primarily on three areas. We study the fundamental cell biology of the organism, including central processes such as cell wall metabolism, cell growth and translation.  We also investigate antibiotics – how they work and how we can make new ones.  Finally, we build the tools to study mycobacteria both in vitro and during infection.

We are also interested in the related non-tuberculous mycobacteria (NTM). Infections from NTMs are on the rise and notoriously difficult to treat. We are pursuing new tools to study the unique biology of NTMs in hopes of discovering new therapeutic approaches.