JBU professor awarded $250,000 to study bacteria

Dr. Joel Funk, assistant professor of biology has been awarded an Arkansas IDeA Network of Biomedical Research Excellence grant to fund his research program on bacteria for the next two and a half years. 

Funk is studying the Coxiella burnetii bacterium, which invades the immune system, replicates inside human cells and causes the disease Q fever. He and his mentor, Dr. Daniel Voth from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, will be using a non-pathogenic strain to study how the bacteria are able to manipulate the host cell into forming a protected replication compartment. The findings of this research will be used to identify potential drug targets that could result in new therapies for treating Q fever and the many symptoms that it causes.

His proposal was selected for funding from a pool of eight applications for this single award. The funding begins January of 2013.