Home Faculty and Research Faculty by Name Richard Calendar

Richard Calendar

Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

Full Directory Information

Research Interests

We are making a better vaccine for Bacillus anthracis and defining B. anthracis pathogenicity genes by transposon insertion.

Current Projects

Vaccine: The current anthrax vaccine is a partially purified culture supernatant that is not very effective. It is also reactogenic, that is, it causes inflamation near the site of injection. We have used genetic and physical means to inactivate B. anthracis, so that cells can be used as a basis for a vaccine. We are constructing mutant B. anthracis that will maximize immunogenicity. We are constructing an integration vector--a plasmid that can insert in the B. anthracis chromosome--that will allow us to express particular antigens of B. anthracis at a high level. Pathogenicity genes: We have adapted the mariner transposon for use in B. anthracis. We have made random insertions in the B. anthracis chromosome and are characterizing specific kinds of mutants that are less pathogenic. In one of our assays we use a macrophage cell line that will lyse if presented with only two B. anthracis proteins, called protective antigen and lethal factor. We have isolated B. anthracis transposon-insertion mutants that do not lyse macrophages, even though their transposon insertions are not in the genes for protective antigen or lethal factor. We plan to determine whether these mutants are defective in the folding or excretion of protective antigen and/or lethal factor, or whether they affect some other process.

Selected Publications

Molecular characterization of L-413C, a P2-related plague diagnostic bacteriophage. E. Garcia, P. Chain, J. M. Elliott, A. G. Bobrov, V. L. Motin, O. Kirillina, V. Lao, R. Calendar and A. A. Filippov. Virology, on-line ahead of print, 2007. 

The Bacteriophages. R. Calendar, Editor. Oxford University Press, New York, 2006.

Bacteriophage Biology. R. Calendar and R. B. Inman. In Phages: Their Role in Bacterial Pathogenesis and Biotechnology," Ed. M. Waldor, D. Friedman and D. Court, American Society for Microbiology, Washington, D.C., 2005.

P2 growth restriction on an rpoC mutant is suppressed by alleles of the Rz1 homolog lys. C. D. Markov, G. Christie, B. Sauer, R. Calendar, T. Park, R. Young and K. Severinov. J. Bacteriol.186: 4628-4637, 2004.

Genome and proteome of Listeria monocytogenes bacteriophage PSA: Programmed +1 translational frameshifting is utilized for synthesis of major structural proteins. Marcus Zimmer, Elke Sattelberger, Ross B. Inman, Richard Calendar and Martin Loessner. Molecular Microbiology 50:303-317, 2003.

Construction, Characterization, and Use of two Listeria monocytogenes site-specific phage integration vectors. P. Lauer, M. Chow, M. J. Loessner, D. Portnoy, and R. Calendar.  J. Bacteriol. 184: 4177-4186, 2002.

Gene insertion and replacement in Schizosaccharomyces pombe mediated by the Streptomyces bacteriophage phiC31 site-specific recombination system Lynn C. Thomason, Richard Calendar, and David W. Ow. Molecular Genetics and Genomics 265:1031-1038, 2001.

Last Updated 2007-12-18