Dr. Shumin Tan is an Associate Professor of Microbiology at Tufts University School of Medicine. The overall theme of her research centers on understanding how the pathogenic bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) exploits environmental cues to survive and grow in its host. What host environmental signals serve as cues for Mtb in determining its location in the host? How are these cues sensed and responded to? How do these responses enable Mtb to usurp or modify host processes to create a replicative niche for itself? In addition, her lab is interested in the basis and impact on infection outcome of the marked heterogeneity observed during Mtb infection, particularly with respect to environmental cues. Dr. Tan explores these questions using macrophage and murine infection models, and novel fluorescent reporter Mtb strains that allow mechanistic studies in vitro, and that facilitate studies of Mtb responses in vivo at the level of the single bacterium.  She is currently working with Dr. Linden Hu’s laboratory to employ some of these techniques that she has developed for Mtb to understand heterogeneity and movement of B. burgdorferi during its natural interactions with the host immune system

Read more about Dr. Tan at: https://medicine.tufts.edu/people/faculty/shumin-tan