Samira Heydari

My Ph.D. research focused on inter-kingdom interactions between gastric bacteria and fungi. My work demonstrated that the presence of bacteria inside fungal hosts is a widespread phenomenon, suggesting that fungi serve as an environmental reservoir for certain bacteria, including Helicobacter pylori.

In the Liu lab at Yale, I am investigating host-microbe interactions mediated by bacterial secretion systems, specifically type IV (T4SS), to determine their in-situ structure and dynamics. Secretion systems play a crucial role in pathogens by translocating virulence factors from the bacterial cytoplasm to the host cell. I am now using cryo-electron microscopy and microbiology techniques to solve how these specialized nanomachines are activated to inject molecular effectors and toxins into target cells.