Profile Photo of Angela Mitchell
Angela Mitchell

Assistant Professor

Fax: 979-845-2891
Email:
amitchell@bio.tamu.edu

Mitchell Lab Website
Mitchell CV

Office: 301A BSBE

Lab: 308 BSBE
Phone: 979-845-5158

Joined the Department in 2019

  • B.S. in Biotechnology, Elizabethtown College. 2008
  • Ph.D. in Microbiology and Immunology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 2013
  • Postdoctoral Research Associate Princeton University, Department of Molecular Biology. 2014-19

Associations:

  • American Association for the Advancement of Science
  • American Society for Microbiology
  • American Society for Virology

The outer layer of the gram-negative bacterial cellular envelope contains an outer membrane (OM), which surrounds the bacteria and protects it from the environment. The OM is largely impermeable to both large and hydrophobic molecules, leading to the intrinsic resistance of gram-negative bacteria to many antibiotics. In fact, this makes gram-negative bacteria inherently orders of magnitude more resistant to many antibiotics than gram-positive bacteria. Due to this permeability barrier, the last new class of antibiotics treating gram-negative infections was developed in the 1960’s.

Given the importance of the OM for antibiotic resistance, it is imperative to clarify the mechanisms of OM maintenance and adaptation during stress. The overarching goal of my lab is to understand the mechanisms that strengthen the outer membrane (OM) permeability barrier of gram-negative bacteria during stress. The lab’s general approach is to use genetics and biochemistry to interrogate (i) changes to the barrier during stress, (ii) the mechanisms that strengthen the barrier, and (iii) the role of these changes in antibiotic resistance and pathogenesis.

Please visit the Mitchell Lab website for more information about the lab and our current projects.

  1. Bautista, DE, Whitehead, CR, Mitchell, AM. Loss of DNA mismatch repair genes leads to acquisition of antibiotic resistance independent of secondary mutations. bioRxiv. 2025; :. doi: 10.1101/2025.06.20.660601. PubMed PMID:40667202 PubMed Central PMC12262642.
  2. Carr, JF, Rudolf, JS, Warzecha, DJ, Rezenom, YH, Mitchell, AM. Chain-length regulation by WzzE is necessary for, but genetically separable from, cyclic enterobacterial common antigen synthesis. bioRxiv. 2025; :. doi: 10.1101/2025.06.25.661564. PubMed PMID:40667166 PubMed Central PMC12262372.
  3. Carr, JF, De Santiago, CB, Bhut, SA, Warzecha, DJ, Wei, R, Herrera, CM et al.. Impaired envelope integrity in the absence of SanA is linked to increased Lipid II availability and an imbalance of FtsI and FtsW activities. bioRxiv. 2025; :. doi: 10.1101/2025.06.10.658892. PubMed PMID:40661497 PubMed Central PMC12259093.
  4. Bennett, HC, Mitchell, AM. Recent advances in understanding of enterobacterial common antigen synthesis and regulation. Open Biol. 2025;15 (7):250055. doi: 10.1098/rsob.250055. PubMed PMID:40592470 PubMed Central PMC12212991.
  5. Rai, AK, Sawasato, K, Bennett, HC, Kozlova, A, Sparagna, GC, Bogdanov, M et al.. Genetic evidence for functional diversification of gram-negative intermembrane phospholipid transporters. PLoS Genet. 2024;20 (6):e1011335. doi: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1011335. PubMed PMID:38913742 PubMed Central PMC11226057.
  6. Saenkham-Huntsinger, P, Ritter, M, Donati, GL, Mitchell, AM, Subashchandrabose, S. The inner membrane protein YhiM links copper and CpxAR envelope stress responses in uropathogenic E. coli. mBio. 2024;15 (4):e0352223. doi: 10.1128/mbio.03522-23. PubMed PMID:38470052 PubMed Central PMC11005409.
  7. Rai, AK, Sawasato, K, Bennett, HC, Kozlova, A, Sparagna, GC, Bogdanov, M et al.. Genetic evidence for functional diversification of gram-negative intermembrane phospholipid transporters. bioRxiv. 2024; :. doi: 10.1101/2023.06.21.545913. PubMed PMID:37745482 PubMed Central PMC10515749.
  8. Morris, KN, Mitchell, AM. Phosphatidylglycerol Is the Lipid Donor for Synthesis of Phospholipid-Linked Enterobacterial Common Antigen. J Bacteriol. 2023;205 (1):e0040322. doi: 10.1128/jb.00403-22. PubMed PMID:36622229 PubMed Central PMC9879101.
  9. Bautista, DE, Carr, JF, Mitchell, AM. Suppressor Mutants: History and Today's Applications. EcoSal Plus. 2021;9 (2):eESP00372020. doi: 10.1128/ecosalplus.ESP-0037-2020. PubMed PMID:34910591 PubMed Central PMC9008745.
  10. Rai, AK, Carr, JF, Bautista, DE, Wang, W, Mitchell, AM. ElyC and Cyclic Enterobacterial Common Antigen Regulate Synthesis of Phosphoglyceride-Linked Enterobacterial Common Antigen. mBio. 2021;12 (6):e0284621. doi: 10.1128/mBio.02846-21. PubMed PMID:34809459 PubMed Central PMC8609368.
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