Ms. Alyssa M. Schami

Ms. Alyssa Schami received her B.Sc. in Biochemistry from the University of North Texas in 2019. She joined Texas Biomed in Fall 2019 after beginning UT Health San Antonio’s Integrated Biomedical Sciences (IBMS) Ph.D. program. Her current research focuses on understanding how modulating levels of a subset of M. tuberculosis cell envelope lipids, phosphatidyl-myo-inositol mannosides (PIMs), determine the infectivity, virulence, and drug resistance of M. tuberculosis. Specifically, she studies how various mutations in specific genes involved in PIM’s biosynthesis and/or transport influences PIMs levels, and subsequently M. tuberculosis infectivity, and growth in vitro and in vivo. She also examines the cell envelope composition of M. tuberculosis clinical isolates that range from drug susceptible to multi- and extensively-drug resistant, with the ultimate goal of identifying how the cell envelope evolves in relation to drug resistance and how this evolution influences pathogenesis during infection.