Dass
Microbial Ecology Laboratory

Research in the Dass lab focuses on the selection pressures shaping microbial ecology at the vital intersection of human health and agriculture. The program spans rangeland, farm, and commercial processing, and treats detection of pathogens and resistance genes as inseparable from the ecology that sustains them. We examine molecular ecology and multipartite microbiome interactions across microbial recontamination in food processing environments, recurrent bacterial infections, wildlife disease spillover to domestic animals and humans, vector and pest driven threats to livestock, and antimicrobial resistance management in food production.

 

Multi-species biofilms provide the mechanistic foundation for the persistence and recontamination research. We investigate how pathogens are recruited into resident communities, adapt and persist within a shared niche, and seed later transmission through production and processing environments. The laboratory also builds surveillance and diagnostic capability for operational settings, including quantitative molecular detection, high resolution sequencing, and environmental DNA surveillance, supporting early detection and response at state, national, and binational scale.

 

One Health provides the framework, emphasizing the interconnected pathways of disease transmission among wildlife, livestock, the environment, and humans. That complexity calls for a systems approach and interdisciplinary collaboration across microbial ecology, wildlife and vector ecology, biofilm biology, virology, biophysics, multi-omics, bioinformatics, and mathematical modeling. Together, these connect mechanism to action, revealing how pathogens persist and move across agricultural systems and turning that knowledge into earlier detection, targeted control, and more effective disease prevention.