Overview
B.S. Biomedical Sciences, University of Central Florida
Ph.D. Biomedical and Biological Sciences, Cornell University
Kaley grew up in Central Florida and graduated with honors from UCF in 2015 with a B.S. in Biomedical Sciences and a minor in Philosophy. She became interested in research as a career while taking Dr. Kyle Rohde’s Infectious Processes class at UCF. Under his mentorship, she completed an Honors in the Major undergraduate thesis project, investigating novel fluorescent tools to monitor protein-protein interactions in mycobacteria for whole-cell drug screening applications, using Mycobacterium smegmatis as a model.
Excited to learn more about tuberculosis, Kaley joined Dr. Brian VanderVen’s lab at Cornell University where she completed her Ph.D. in Biomedical and Biological Sciences. While in the VanderVen Lab, she studied how Mycobacterium tuberculosis utilizes host lipids as carbon sources during infection and sought to characterize mechanisms to leverage these pathways as antibiotic targets. Her thesis work demonstrated that a novel small molecule (V-59) chemically activates cAMP synthesis in M. tuberculosis via a bacterial adenylyl cyclase (Rv1625c), and this mechanism of action inhibits cholesterol utilization by the bacterium, decreasing M. tuberculosis growth and lung pathology during infection in mice.
As a postdoc at Duke, she is excited to use the diverse disease manifestations presented by the Collaborative Cross mouse panel to investigate how a range of host microenvironments dictate distinct M. tuberculosis responses that counteract host and/or antibiotic pressures.
Her hobbies outside of the lab include exploring local trails, tennis, playing Dungeons & Dragons, and reading novels.
You can follow her on Twitter @kaymwilburn
Contact Kaley at: kaley.wilburn@duke.edu
PUBLICATIONS
Fieweger R., Wilburn K., VanderVen B. “Comparing the Metabolic Capabilities of Bacteria in the Mycobacterium tuberculosis Complex” Microorganisms. 7(6):177, 2019. (Review article)
Wilburn K., Fieweger R., VanderVen B. “Cholesterol and Fatty Acids Grease the Wheels of Mycobacterium Tuberculosis Pathogenesis” Pathogens and Disease 76(2):fty021, 2018. (Review article)
Nazarova E., Montague C., La T., Wilburn K., Sukumar N., Lee W., Caldwell S., Russell D., VanderVen B. “Rv3723/LucA Coordinates Fatty Acid and Cholesterol Uptake in Mycobacterium tuberculosis” eLife. 6:e26969, 2017.