Katherine P. Lemon
She/Her
I am lesbian and I am a microbiologist and pediatric infectious diseases physician.//
I follow my curiosity and am fascinated by microbes. My long-term research goal is to use human nasal microbiota to identify new ways to prevent and treat infections. I earned an A.B. in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from Harvard. After working several years in the outdoor industry, I went to medical school, where I learned how much was still unknown in medicine. My curiosity led me to complete a Ph.D. working on Bacillus subtilis with Alan Grossman at MIT, plus an MD from Harvard Medical School. After clinical training, I did postdoctoral research with Roberto Kolter, initially investigating Listeria monocytogenes biofilms. However, interspecies interactions and microbiome research sparked my curiosity. Simultaneously, as a Pediatric Infectious Diseases doctor, I regularly encountered invasive infections caused by two common human nasal pathobionts, Staphylococcus aureus and Streptococcus pneumoniae. I wondered, how do beneficial nasal microbionts resist pathobiont colonization, or affect pathobiont behavior, to protect us from infections? So, I began elucidating microbial interactions in human nasal microbiota. My lab at Baylor College of Medicine is pioneering use of human nasal organoids to learn how bacteria colonize the human nasal passages and explore how bacterial microbiota might mitigate the severity of respiratory viral infections.
https://www.bcm.edu/research/faculty-labs/katherine-lemon-lab