Michael D. L. Johnson received a bachelors degree from Duke University. He obtained his Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Biophysics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he studied the effects of calcium on bacterial motility and attachment under the mentorship of Matthew Redinbo, in 2011.
Michael went on to do two postdoctoral fellowships at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and as of July 2016, he started his own laboratory in the Department of Immunobiology at The University of Arizona.
Dr. Johnson just received a MIRA R35 grant for 1.8 million dollars from NIGMS entitled “Elucidating the orchestrated bacterial response to copper toxicity.”
Copper is very toxic to bacteria. The major hope of my lab is to use the understanding of how copper is toxic and how bacteria try to combat that stress as a means to overcome antibiotic resistant bacteria. Congratulations Michael D.L. Johnson!