The Malcolm Lab has studied bacterial mechanosensitive ion channels at the University of North Florida since fall of 2015. Dr. Malcolm is an assistant professor in the department of chemistry and typically teaches 3 courses each semester often General Chemistry and Biochemistry courses.

The Malcolm lab is focused on answering questions such as:
How do bacteria survive osmotic downshock? Which mechanosensitive channels are essential for this survival?
In order to answer these questions we look at the expression of the different channels and look at the single channel conductance of each channel in a patch clamp electrophysiology experiment. We are very interested in thinking about how these channels are involved in cell survival in novel bacterial strains.