Dylan Shropshire, assistant professor of biological sciences, studies Wolbachia, a bacterium that lives inside insect cells and can manipulate reproduction, suppress pathogens, and influence population dynamics—all while being passed maternally from one generation to the next. Originally interested in insect behavior, Shropshire was drawn to microbiomes during his graduate studies at Vanderbilt University, where he began working with Wolbachia. His lab now focuses on understanding how this microbe becomes common across species, populations, and individuals, with implications for public health efforts that use Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes to combat diseases like dengue and Zika. Despite success in some regions, these interventions are often slow or fail due to weak bacterial traits. Shropshire’s team uses fruit flies to study the genetic and cellular mechanisms that underlie Wolbachia’s behavior, including how it spreads, exits and enters host cells, and manipulates reproduction through a process called cytoplasmic incompatibility. Since Wolbachia cannot be cultured outside host cells, the lab develops innovative tools such as genetic insertions and molecular techniques to measure bacterial presence and function. Their work not only aims to answer fundamental questions about microbial ecology and evolution, but also to refine and accelerate the use of Wolbachia as a targeted, sustainable tool for controlling vector-borne diseases.
