Dr. Gloor examines vaginal microbiome and has found that the number and type of bacteria in the vagina have a profound effect on women's health and their risk of contracting or transmitting STDs. The Gloor lab use the Illumina, 454 and ABI-Solid high-throughput sequencing methods to determine which organisms are associated with health and disease, what genes they are using in each state and to determine the genome sequences of various lactobacilli that are of use as probiotics.
The Gloor lab is also studying the protein sequence coevolution by using on mutual information to identify protein active sites. This study has revealed that active sites (binding sites, catalytic sites, domain interfaces) are unexpectedly rich in mutual information. This suggests that the pairs of residues in these interfaces evolve coordinately.
The lab is currently working on next-generation methods of detecting covariation.
