Biography

Dr Shivanand Hegde obtained his bachelor’s degree (BSc) in Chemistry, Physics and Mathematics and master’s degree (MSc) in Biochemistry from Karnatak University, Dharwad, India. During 2007-2009, Dr Hegde worked at Indian Institute of Science (IISc), a premier research institution in India, as a research assistant on the project characterizing the topoisomerase I enzyme from Mycobacterium smegmatis. During his time at IISc, Dr Hegde became interested in studying host-microbe interactions and decided to pursue PhD in microbial pathogenesis. He joined Prof. Renate Rosengarten laboratory at University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna, Austria for PhD studies. During PhD, he studied molecular pathogenesis of Mycoplasma agalactiae (MA), a pathogen of sheep and goats. Dr Hegde was the first to show invasion and intracellular replication of MA both in vitro and in vivo systems (Hegde et al., 2014). He also identified key genetic factors involved in the colonization and systemic spreading of MA in the sheep intramammary infection model (Hegde et al, 2015, Hegde et al., 2017). Dr Hegde characterized a pdhA mutant of MA to show its moonlighting function in the pathogenesis.

After his PhD, Dr Hegde joined Dr Grant Hughes laboratory at University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, Texas USA as a postdoctoral fellow. Here, he continued his research on the host-microbe interactions in mosquitoes and completed projects on mosquito gut epithelium invasion of symbiotic bacteria, microbe-microbe interactions, and mosquito response to Zika virus (ZIKV) infection. Dr Hegde’s research has uncovered invasion of gut symbionts in the mosquito cells and their ability to interfere with the replication of ZIKV and Chikungunya virus (Hegde et al., 2020). Focussing on the factors shaping the microbiome, Dr Hegde’s work showed complex inter-microbial interactions in mosquitoes using high throughput sequencing and, he validated interactions using a mono-association infection model (Hegde et al., 2018, Kozlova and Hegde et al., 2021). Dr Hegde’s research interest expands into developing novel approaches to study host-microbe interactions. Using the CRISPR Cas9 editing approach, Dr Hegde successfully engineered the mosquito symbiont genomes and completed stable integration of foreign genes into the bacterial genome (Hegde et al., 2019). Utilizing gnotobiotic rearing technique, Dr Hegde and colleagues developed a novel microbiome transplantation method to achieve interspecies microbiome transfer in mosquitoes (Coon and Hegde et al., 2022).

In October 2022, Dr Hegde joined the School of Life Sciences at Keele University as a Lecturer in Infectious Diseases. His research at Keele aims to investigate the molecular mechanism of tripartite interactions between the mosquitoes, their microbiome, and pathogens they transmit. Dr Hegde’s research uses wide range of techniques in molecular biology, virology, microbial ecology, vector biology, and bioinformatics to identify the factors shaping the microbiome assembly, molecular mechanisms of arboviruses and host interaction in the mosquito gut, and evolution of microbial communities in the mosquito gut. The outcome of Dr Hegde’s research would be valuable in developing next generation vector control approaches to reduce the burden of mosquito borne diseases.

ORCID

Google scholar

Teaching

Semester 1

• LSC-40029 Biomedical Ethics and Grant Proposal
• LSC-40038 Research Methodologies

Semester 2

• LSC-40030 Project Management and Business planning
• LSC-40055 Infectious Disease

Further information

Awards

• 2019 ANTI-VeC Travel Bursary (£300)
• 2018 Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation scholarship for International Symbiosis Society
• (ISS) Meeting 2018 ($300)
• 2017 Wellcome Trust Travel Scholarship (£ 2000)
• 2017 Best poster prize at the dept. of Pathology’s Trainee Research day ($500)
• 2017 ASM Travel award for postdoctoral fellow ($500)

Supervision

Mentoring and co-supervising

Visiting researcher

• 2019 Visiting Assistant professor (Dr. Mariana David)

PhD Students

• 2015-2018. PhD student (Dr Miguel Saldana)
• 2017 PhD rotation student (Ashley)
• 2017 visiting PhD student (Dr Pornjarim Nilyanimit)

Bachelor and master students

• 2018-2019 Masters project (Hannah Farley, Jordan Kay)
• 2010, 2019 bachelors project (Ionida Ziba, Amy Ware, Priestley Phoebe

Collaborations and grants awards

2020-2022 LSTM Director’s Catalyst Fund to study microbiome transmission in
mosquitoes (£50,000).

2018-2019 McLaughlin Postdoctoral fellowship (~$100, 000). Independent fellowship to
develop microbiome transplantation.