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Joe Dillard

@sacculus.bsky.social

882 followers 638 following 43 posts

Bacteriologist. We study Nesseria, Gardnerella, and all things related to peptidoglycan. Professor at UW-Madison.

Joe Dillard @sacculus.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

The Dillard Lab is looking to hire a research technician to study the mechanisms by which Neisseria gonorrhoeae damages human Fallopian tubes during pelvic inflammatory disease. Lab website: www.dillardlab.mmi.wisc.edu View the job posting: shorturl.at/YO2sE

Fallopian tube tissue infected with Neisseria gonorrhoeae is shown. Dead ciliated cells are seen where they have been extruded from the tissue

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Joe Dillard @sacculus.bsky.social · 01/01/2026

Wishing a happy and successful year to all of you

A small dish containing black-eyed peas, collard greens, a wedge of cornbread, and a Serrano pepper.

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Joe Dillard @sacculus.bsky.social · 16/05/2025

It's the height of morel season in south-central Wisconsin.

78 morel mushrooms, mostly of the yellow variety, dry on a metal dish rack.

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Joe Dillard @sacculus.bsky.social · 12/05/2025

We have developed methods for making targeted mutations in Gardnerella species. It's been a long slog, and the bacteria put up a lot of hurdles. Thanks to the hard work and ingenuity of Amy Klimowicz and Erin Garcia, we can make deletions, point mutations, and complements. Preprint is on bioRxiv.

A scanning electron micrograph showing rod-shaped Gardnerella vaginalis bacteria colored purple interacting with coccal Neisseria gonorrhoeae bacteria colored pink, all surrounded by biofilm goo colored yellow. The experiment in the picture was done by Amy Klimowicz, and the false-coloring by Melanie Callaghan.

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Joe Dillard @sacculus.bsky.social · 31/03/2025

Spring is just starting in south central Wisconsin. My son and I enjoyed a 5 mile hike and foraging for scarlet elf cups in the rain.

Left. A somewhat damp man in a UW badgers hat stands in front of a stream in a forest of bare trees. Right. Painstakingly cleaned scarlet elf cup mushrooms cook in a skillet with butter.

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Joe Dillard @sacculus.bsky.social · 01/01/2025

Happy New Year!

Collard greens, black-eyed peas, a serrano pepper, and a wedge of cornbread on a plate shaped like a fish. This is a traditional southern US meal for New Year's Day, alleged to bring good luck and prosperity.

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Joe Dillard @sacculus.bsky.social · 04/11/2024

A man in a red UW badgers hat peers into the camera as his black and gray blue heeler dog stares distractedly at a far away object. The background is a rural Wisconsin road in the fall.

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Joe Dillard @sacculus.bsky.social · 28/06/2024

🧪 We've published our first paper on Gardnerella. There is extensive phase variation in all the Gardnerella species we examined. It effects surface proteins, toxin production, and human cervix infection ex vivo. doi.org/10.1128/msph...

Colonies of the bacteria Gardnerella, strain 3336, grow on an agar plate and appear as large or small colonies (left panel). The number of Gardnerella surviving in an infection of huaman cervix tissue in the lab is depicted in a bar graph, and the number of small colony variants that survive is greater than those of the large colony variants (right panel).

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Joe Dillard @sacculus.bsky.social · 06/05/2024

🧪 In PID, peptidoglycan fragments and other soluble molecules released by Neisseria gonorrhoeae lead to tissue damage. Our latest article describes the transcriptomic responses in human Fallopian tube tissue to these molecules or gonococcal infection. rdcu.be/dGR5W

Ciliated Fallopian tube cells slough from the epithelium in response to purified tripeptide peptidoglycan monomer (GlcNAc-anhydro-MurNAc-Ala-iGlu-Dap).

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Joe Dillard @sacculus.bsky.social · 01/01/2024

Happy New Year!

Picture of traditional southern new year's day meal of mustard greens, cornbread, and peas.

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Joe Dillard @sacculus.bsky.social · 04/12/2023

Check out our new pub on cell wall metabolism in Neisseria gonorrhoeae. Mutation of the gene for the peptidoglycan terminase MltG results in cells that are abnormally large and pour out cell wall fragments. Antibiotic resistant strains become sensitive when mltG is mutated. doi.org/10.1128/jb.0...

Electron micrographs of thin sections of gonococcal cells show that mltG mutant cells are larger than wild type or complement cells.

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Joe Dillard @sacculus.bsky.social · 27/10/2023

Today my lab is celebrating our 25th anniversary, 25 years of studying pathogenic Neisseria, type IV secretion, peptidoglycan, Fallopian tubes, and recently, Gardnerella. We've had a lot of fun and learned a lot of stuff.

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