Karine A Gibbs

Karine Gibbs is a Jamaican American microbiologist and immunologist and an associate professor in the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. Gibbs’ research merges the fields of sociomicrobiology and bacterial cell biology to explore how the bacterial pathogen Proteus mirabilis, a common gut bacterium which can become pathogenic and cause urinary tract infections, identifies self versus non-self. In 2013, Gibbs and her team were the first to sequence the genome of P. mirabilis BB2000, the model organism for studying self-recognition. In graduate school at Stanford University, Gibbs helped to pioneer the design of a novel tool that allowed for visualization of the movement of bacterial membrane proteins in real time. In 2020, Gibbs was recognized by Cell Press as one of the top 100 Inspiring Black Scientists in America.

Early life and education Gibbs was born in Jamaica. When she was a child, her family moved to Baltimore, Maryland, where she attended middle school and high school. In high school, Gibbs ran track and field, just as her parents had when they were in high school. In addition to her athletic endeavours, Gibbs also pursued research opportunities in high school. She completed a summer research internship at Villanova University and two summer internships at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Disease studying viruses. Gibbs majored in biochemical sciences and pursued undergraduate research with Roberto Kolter at Harvard Medical School studying biofilms on implants and medical devices. She found that the catabolite repression control protein, which regulates carbon metabolism, is essential for biofilm formation in Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Under the mentorship of Julie Theriot, Gibbs explored the movement of surface proteins within bacterial membranes and on bacterial surface walls. During her PhD, Gibbs collaborated with two other labs at Stanford to develop a novel tool to tag the surface proteins on bacteria while they were living to enable visualization of protein movement within the membrane throughout the microbial life cycle. Her tool is now used today by many labs around the world. She found two populations of the LamB protein, one that has restricted mobility and one that has high mobility in the membrane. She later found that the Ids genes are transcribed as an operon and she located the promoter region of the operon. In 2015, Gibbs was promoted to Associate Professor. Gibbs has had a passion for teaching since her undergraduate years Gibbs is also the principal investigator of the Gibbs Lab where she continue to explore social behaviors in the bacterium P. mirabilis with a focus on how cells determine self versus non-self. In addition, Gibbs is collaborating with interdisciplinary groups at Harvard to explore the mechanisms of pathogenesis of P. mirabilis, as it is harmless in the gut, but can spread of the kidney and form biofilms on urinary catheters causing infection and disease. Gibbs is also an editor for eLife for the subject area of Microbial and Infectious Disease.

Gibbs was appointed as associate professor at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2021.

Cellular self versus non-self recognition In 2013, Gibbs and her colleagues at Harvard were the first to sequence the complete genome of Proteus mirabilis strain BB2000, which is the model system for biological dissection of self-recognition. Gibbs and her colleagues then began to explore the biological mechanisms of self-recognition in P. mirabilis. She found that IdsD and IdsE, two proteins expressed from genes in the Ids operon, seem to encode determinant of strain-specific identity for P. mirabilis and drive sociality within strains of the bacterium.

With her expertise in studying P. mirabilis, Gibbs has also guided colleagues in her field by publishing methods on how to use this bacterium to analyze the mechanisms underlying swarm expansion, boundary formation, and territorial exclusion.

Awards and honors

2020 Named in 100 Inspiring black scientists in America by CellPress 2018 Star Family Challenge for Promising Scientific Research 2012 David and Lucile Packard Foundation Fellowship for Science and Engineering 2005 Professor Sidney Raffel Award, Stanford University Little K, Gibbs KA. Analysis of Proteus mirabilis Social Behaviors on Surfaces. Methods Mol Biol. 2019;2021:45-59. doi:10.1007/978-1-4939-9601-8_6 Saak CC, Gibbs KA. The Self-Identity Protein IdsD Is Communicated between Cells in Swarming Proteus mirabilis Colonies. J Bacteriol. 2016;198(24):3278-3286. Published 2016 Nov 18. doi:10.1128/JB.00402-16