In April 2025, computational microbiologist Supriya Khedkar started as a new research group leader at BioQuant, Heidelberg University. Her research focuses on studying gene exchange in microbes, an important factor in microbial survival and prevalence in humans, animals, agricultural soils, seas and oceans of our planet.

“In the context of human health, microbes and in particular infection causing bacterial pathogens can develop resistance to prescribed antibiotics through gene exchanges. This is a major healthcare issue that leads to untreatable infections in the clinics and causes up to a million deaths worldwide each year. Gene exchanges fueled by Mobile Genetic Elements (MGEs) can lead to rapid spread of resistance, making infections challenging to treat. Hence, it is important to identify and study the dynamics of MGEs shuttling in and out of bacterial pathogens to develop strategies to prevent and contain spread of resistance” says Khedkar.

Supriya Khedkar is a trained microbiologist, with strong expertise in bacterial genomics and bioinformatics. At National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) in Bangalore, India she began her research in pathogen genomics while studying virulence in Staphylococcus aureus and Vibrio cholerae. For her PhD at NCBS, she studied evolution of microbial genomes using integrative frameworks combining experimental and computational approaches. She moved to the Bork group at EMBL Heidelberg, Germany as a postdoctoral fellow, where she began her research on Mobile Genetic Elements by pioneering a method for genomic capture of MGEs at high-resolution and dived into studying microbial communities using metagenomics.

At BioQuant, Khedkar’s mobile DNA lab will study how Mobile Genetic Elements and their interactions with the host-microbes contribute to gene exchanges and shape microbial communities a.k.a the microbiome. Her group will answer both basic and translational questions at the interface of mobile DNA and microbiome research. For instance, by studying dynamics of MGEs responsible for spread of antibiotic resistance across the microbiome and infection causing pathogens, her group aims to contribute to design of future antibiotic treatment strategies to ensure low-risk of emergence and spread of antibiotic resistance.

Khedkar’s research is highly interdisciplinary and collaborative. She employs principles and approaches from diverse sub-fields – including microbiology, functional and comparative genomics, (meta)genomics, statistics and bioinformatics to gain biological insights. At BioQuant, she aims to build a collaborative, supportive and inclusive team. She looks forward to training group members in the skills needed to advance their careers, while advancing our understanding of the role of mobile genetic elements in microbial survival and adaptation.