Organizing Committee Member
Phillip E. Klebba
Professor and Head
Kansas State University
USA
Biography
Dr.Phillip Klebba received his doctorate in Biochemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, working with the discoverer of siderophores, Dr. Joe . Neilands. He performed post-doctoral study with Drs. Leon Rosenberg at Stanford University and Hiroshi Nikaido at UC Berkeley, and was a visiting professor with Drs Maurice Hofnung, Institut Pasteur, Alain Charbit, Institut Necker, and Ron Kaback, UCLA. Dr. Klebba is Head of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics at Kansas State University. His research interests focus on biophysical approaches to problems in membrane transport, especially iron acquisition by bacteria.
Research Area
My scientific interests focus on the mechanisms of iron acquisition pro†and eukaryotic cells, including transformed cells. This goal involved different processes in Gramâ€negative bacteria, Gramâ€positive bacteria, and most recently cancer cells. Iron is essential for cellular metabolism in both bacteria and animals, and consequently it is a virulence determinant in regard to bacterial pathogenesis. E. coli and its Gramâ€negative relatives (e.g., Salmonella, Shigella, Vibrio, Neisseria, Yersinia, Klebsiella, Pseudomonas, etc) secrete small molecules called siderophores (Gr; ironâ€bearer) that chelate iron in the environment. They then capture these