Current lab members

Principal Investigator

Naima Gabriela Sharaf, Ph.D.

Dr. Naima Gabriela Sharaf earned her bachelor's degree in chemistry from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She completed her Ph.D. in Dr. Angela Gronenborn's laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh, where she used fluorine NMR to investigate inhibitor-induced conformational changes in HIV-1 reverse transcriptase. She then completed her postdoctoral training in Dr. Doug Rees' laboratory at Caltech, where she combined X-ray crystallography, cryoEM, and biochemistry to elucidate the structure and function of the Neisseria meningitidis LipoMetQ-LipoMetNI ABC transporter. This work catalyzed her interest in using bacterial lipoproteins as components of biomaterials.

Dr. Sharaf is an Assistant Professor of Biology at Stanford University, where her laboratory investigates bacterial lipoproteins in two complementary research areas. First, her laboratory investigates the molecular mechanisms by which bacterial lipoproteins mediate nutrient biosynthesis and transport in Borrelia burgdorferi, the causative agent of Lyme disease. Second, the laboratory develops novel ways to use bacterial lipoproteins as components of biomaterials. Examples include the LipoCatch and LipoLoad platforms, which can be leveraged for modular attachment of proteins and for molecular cargo encapsulation, which can be leveraged for targeted drug delivery and vaccine development.