About the Department

Bacteriology first emerged in the curriculum of Carolina’s nascent School of Medicine in 1896, when a course in pathology, which included an introduction to medical bacteriology, was introduced. In 1923, Dr. Daniel A. MacPherson joined the faculty as an instructor in bacteriology, with the charge to establish bacteriology as a separate department. This was accomplished in 1929, and inaugurated as the Department of Bacteriology and Immunology. In the 1980s the name was changed again to the Department of Microbiology and Immunology. In its near 80-year history, the Department has focused on a commitment to excellence in the teaching and training of scientists and medical practitioners.

In 1984, the Department received its first NIH T-32 award to develop and enhance research training opportunities for our students. The department is home to three NIAID T32 awards, in pathogenesis, immunology, and virology.  Department faculty now participate in T32s with training emphasis on Virology, Bacterial Pathogenesis, Sexually Transmitted Pathogens, Immunology, and Cancer.  Of the doctoral candidates and post docs who have received training from these grants, 80% continue in active, independent research careers, either in academia or industry.

Because of our faculty affiliations throughout the Medical School, other schools within Health Affairs and across the campus, there are numerous opportunities for collaborations that result in joint publications between labs.  As a department within the Medical School, there are opportunities to interact with physicians and to work on research projects that have the possibility of making a direct impact on human health and the practice of medicine. Our department faculty were trained at the very best universities, including: Caltech, Cambridge, University of Chicago, Harvard, MIT, UNC Chapel Hill, Princeton, Stanford, University of Wisconsin at Madison, and Yale. Carolina is a major research university, allowing members of the department ready access to other scientific disciplines and the research support offered by some 40 different core facilities that provide access to specialized instrumentation and materials.

Facts and Rankings:

• 8th in NIH Funding in the Medical School (FY08)
• $16,521,004 in federal grant and contracts (FY08)
• > 45 Graduate Training Faculty
• > 70 Pre-doctoral candidates
• > 50 Post-doctoral trainees

Faculty laboratories are organized under one of four departmental research programs: Immunology, Microbial Genetics and Pathogenesis, Molecular Biology and Virology. Each laboratory is headed by an independent faculty member pursuing his or her own research interests in collaboration with postdoctoral fellows and graduate students. While the laboratories are categorized under these topical research areas, there is considerable overlap of interest amongst the faculty and their individual research initiatives. This cross-fertilization of concepts, techniques, and ideas is supplemented by a regular Seminar Series as well as a Student Seminar Series in which graduate students present the results of their research efforts to faculty and other graduate students.

The goal of our graduate training program is to familiarize students with experimental approaches and methodologies of not only their chosen field of interest, but also the broad cross section of molecular biology, virology, cell biology, biochemistry, genetics, microbiology and immunology that is represented in the Department as a whole.

Research Facilities

The Department occupies approximately 33,000 square feet of the Mary Ellen Jones laboratory office building. A significant number of faculty who hold primary appointments in the department have laboratories housed in the adjacent Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Centeras well other departments within the Schools of Medicine, Dentistry and Public Health. 

Major equipment available to laboratories includes high-resolution transmission electron microscopes, automated instrumentation for amino acid analysis and micro-protein sequencing, peptide and oligonucleotide synthesizers, high pressure liquid chromatography systems, fluorescence-activated cell sorters and analyzers, magnetic cell separation, digital fluorescence microscope and phosphoimager. 

Large, well-equipped research laboratories are supplemented by dedicated tissue culture facilities, darkrooms for X-ray film and photographic applications, warm and cold rooms, supervised animal care facilities, and a BL-3 physical containment facility for research involving Biosafety level 3 pathogens.

The Department also contains computer facilities with connections to the Medical Center computer system, which provides access to several sequence comparison programs, including GCG sequence analysis package.

In addition, the University provides access to some forty technology core facilities with major equipment and expertise including, genomics, NMR, animal histopathology, oligonucleotide synthesis, proteomics, X-ray crystallography, vectors, bioinformatics, Animal models (transgenic mouse and embryonic stem cell services), DNA sequencing, gene chip, flow cytometry, confocal microscopy, and mass spectrometry.