{"id":1731132,"date":"2025-06-17T11:18:44","date_gmt":"2025-06-17T15:18:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/med.virginia.edu\/faculty\/faculty-listing\/qfx4hy\/"},"modified":"2025-06-25T15:28:22","modified_gmt":"2025-06-25T19:28:22","slug":"qfx4hy","status":"publish","type":"faculty-listing","link":"https:\/\/med.virginia.edu\/faculty\/faculty-listing\/qfx4hy\/","title":{"rendered":"Tak, Uday"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My laboratory studies the biological conflict between bacteria and the viruses that infect them: bacteriophages (phages). Bacteriophages are the most abundant entity on the planet, and are crucial for controlling bacterial populations, mediating cellular conflict, and evolving virulence factors in pathogens. Consequently, bacteria have evolved an arsenal of sophisticated innate immune systems (defense systems) that sense and neutralize phage replication, allowing them to survive and proliferate in diverse environments including human hosts. Several of these defense systems are evolutionary ancestors of eukaryotic immune systems including the cGAS-STING pathway, and offer mechanistic and evolutionary insight into the origins of antiviral innate immune signaling. In other cases, these predicted systems are entirely unique to bacteria, and represent new biological paradigms that are waiting to be discovered. Currently the laboratory is interested in the following areas: &#013;&#010;&#013;&#010;I)   Cyclic oligonucleotide signaling in bacterial physiology and phage defense&#013;&#010;II)  Bacterial cell signaling through transmembrane receptors and ion channels&#013;&#010;III) Discovery of new signaling pathways in bacterial conflict&#013;&#010;IV) Engineering bacterial immune components for biotechnology&#013;&#010;&#013;&#010;The lab employs a highly interdisciplinary approach including but not limited to molecular microbiology, biochemistry, electrophysiology, structural biology, high-resolution imaging, membrane reconstitution, and infection biology.&#013;&#010;&#013;&#010;The lab is currently accepting rotation students.&#013;&#010;&#013;&#010;https:\/\/www.taklaboratory.org\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":1734869,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"otheraff":[],"phd-degree":[2570],"primary":[2327],"research-discipline":[2487,2513,2494,2504,2495,2503,2506,2515,2490,2516,2505],"research-opportunity":[2540,2546,2555,2554,2556,2543],"training-grant":[],"class_list":["post-1731132","faculty-listing","type-faculty-listing","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","phd-degree-phd-microbiology","primary-microbiology-immunology-and-cancer-biology","research-discipline-biochemistry","research-discipline-biology","research-discipline-biophysics-structural-biology","research-discipline-biotechnology","research-discipline-computational-biology","research-discipline-immunology","research-discipline-microbiology","research-discipline-molecular-and-cellular-physiology","research-discipline-molecular-biology","research-discipline-molecular-physiology-and-biological-physics","research-discipline-structural-biology","research-opportunity-ro-biochemistry","research-opportunity-ro-biophysicsandstructuralbiology","research-opportunity-ro-biotechnology","research-opportunity-ro-immunology","research-opportunity-ro-microbiology","research-opportunity-ro-molecularbiology"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.1.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Tak, Uday - Research Faculty Directory<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/med.virginia.edu\/faculty\/faculty-listing\/qfx4hy\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Tak, Uday - Research Faculty Directory\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"My laboratory studies the biological conflict between bacteria and the viruses that infect them: bacteriophages (phages). 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