Kevin Forsberg, Ph.D.

Kevin grew up outside Madison, WI, USA and received his B.S. from Arizona State University in 2009. In 2015, he earned his Ph.D. from Washington University in St. Louis for work in the lab of Gautam Dantas studying antibiotic resistance genes in soil. Kevin did his postdoctoral work with Harmit Malik at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center where he launched a research program that focuses on the evolutionary arms race between bacteria and their phages. In 2021, he joined the faculty at UT Southwestern in the Department of Microbiology where he and the rest of the lab continue their work studying the longest-running conflict on Earth.

Undergraduate

Arizona State University (2009)

Graduate School

Washington University (2015), Biol/biomed(molgenetcs/genomcs

• Bacteria-Phage Interactions
• Functional Metagenomics
• Microbial Genetics

Featured Publications

The novel anti-CRISPR AcrIIA22 relieves DNA torsion in target plasmids and impairs SpyCas9 activity.

Forsberg KJ, Schmidtke DT, Werther R, Uribe RV, Hausman D, Sommer MOA, Stoddard BL, Kaiser BK, Malik HS, PLoS Biol 2021 Oct 19 10 e3001428

Functional metagenomics-guided discovery of potent Cas9 inhibitors in the human microbiome.

Forsberg KJ, Bhatt IV, Schmidtke DT, Javanmardi K, Dillard KE, Stoddard BL, Finkelstein IJ, Kaiser BK, Malik HS, Elife 2019 09 8

Shared strategies for ?-lactam catabolism in the soil microbiome.

Crofts TS, Wang B, Spivak A, Gianoulis TA, Forsberg KJ, Gibson MK, Johnsky LA, Broomall SM, Rosenzweig CN, Skowronski EW, Gibbons HS, Sommer MOA, Dantas G, Nat Chem Biol 2018 06 14 6 556-564

Microbial Genomics: The Expanding Universe of Bacterial Defense Systems.

Forsberg KJ, Malik HS, Curr Biol 2018 04 28 8 R361-R364

Structural and Functional Survey of Environmental Aminoglycoside Acetyltransferases Reveals Functionality of Resistance Enzymes.

Xu Z, Stogios PJ, Quaile AT, Forsberg KJ, Patel S, Skarina T, Houliston S, Arrowsmith C, Dantas G, Savchenko A, ACS Infect Dis 2017 09 3 9 653-665

Draft Genome Sequences of Three ?-Lactam-Catabolizing Soil Proteobacteria.

Crofts TS, Wang B, Spivak A, Gianoulis TA, Forsberg KJ, Gibson MK, Johnsky LA, Broomall SM, Rosenzweig CN, Skowronski EW, Gibbons HS, Sommer MOA, Dantas G, Genome Announc 2017 Aug 5 32

Comparative transcriptomics elucidates adaptive phenol tolerance and utilization in lipid-accumulating Rhodococcus opacus PD630.

Yoneda A, Henson WR, Goldner NK, Park KJ, Forsberg KJ, Kim SJ, Pesesky MW, Foston M, Dantas G, Moon TS, Nucleic Acids Res 2016 Mar 44 5 2240-54

Identification of Genes Conferring Tolerance to Lignocellulose-Derived Inhibitors by Functional Selections in Soil Metagenomes.

Forsberg KJ, Patel S, Witt E, Wang B, Ellison TD, Dantas G, Appl Environ Microbiol 2016 01 82 2 528-37

The Tetracycline Destructases: A Novel Family of Tetracycline-Inactivating Enzymes.

Forsberg KJ, Patel S, Wencewicz TA, Dantas G, Chem Biol 2015 Jul 22 7 888-97

Improved annotation of antibiotic resistance determinants reveals microbial resistomes cluster by ecology.

Gibson MK, Forsberg KJ, Dantas G, ISME J 2015 Jan 9 1 207-16

• Searle Scholar
  (2022-2025)
• DP2 New Innovators Award
  (2021-2026)
• UT Southwestern Endowed Scholar
  (2021)
• Helen Hay Whitney Postdoctoral Research Fellow
  (2016-2019)
• National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow
  (2010-2013)