Marvin Whiteley

Marvin Whiteley
Alma materUniversity of Texas at Austin
Texas State University
University of Iowa
Scientific career
FieldsMicrobiology
WorkplacesGeorgia Institute of Technology

Marvin Whiteley is an American microbiologist and professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology whose research focuses on intercellular bacterial communication and biofilm formation.[1] He co-found SynthBiome,[2] a biotechnology company that develops advanced infection model systems. Whiteley serves as the co-director of the Emory-Children's Cystic Fibrosis Center in Atlanta.[3] Whiteley also is a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar[4] and a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology.[5]

Early life and education

Marvin Whiteley received Bachelor of Science degree in zoology from the University of Texas at Austin in 1995.[6][7] He then received a Master of Science in biology from Southwest Texas State University (now Texas State University) in 1997.[8] Whiteley completed his Ph.D. in microbiology at the University of Iowa in 2001. His doctoral research, conducted under microbiologist E. P. Greenberg, focused on quorum sensing and biofilm development in the bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa.[9][6]

Career

Whiteley joined the faculty at the University of Oklahoma in 2002 as an assistant professor of microbiology.[6] He then moved to the University of Texas at Austin in 2006 where he became a member of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology faculty.[6] He was promoted from assistant professor to associate professor in 2009 and attained the rank of full professor in 2013, when he was also appointed as the first Director of UT Austin’s John Ring LaMontagne Center for Infectious Disease.[10] During his tenure at UT Austin, Whiteley also held endowed positions as a fellow of the John Ring LaMontagne Chair in Infectious Diseases and Global Health (2013–2015)[9] and the Mary M. Betzner Morrow Centennial Chair in Microbiology (2015–2017).[11]

Whitely moved to the Georgia Institute of Technology as the Bennie H. & Nelson D. Abell Chair in Molecular and Cellular Biology and as a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in 2017.[1] At Georgia Tech, he founded and served as co-director of the Center for Microbial Dynamics and Infection from 2018-2020.[12] He also serves as an adjunct professor in the Department of Pediatrics at Emory Medical School as well as the co-director of the Emory-Children's Cystic Fibrosis Center in Atlanta.[3] In 2021, Whiteley co-founded SynthBiome Inc.[2]

In 2025, he was named Editor-in-Chief of mBio.[13]

Research contributions

Whiteley's work focuses on the social behavior of bacteria and inter-microbe communication during chronic infection. Early work was on how the pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa packages its quorum-sensing signal Pseudomonas quinolone signal (PQS) into outer membrane vesicles (OMVs) to disseminate among cells.[14] Whiteley also researched a biogenesis mechanism of OMVs by showing that PQS inserts itself into the outer membrane and expands the outer lipid leaflet to induce curvature (a "bilayer-couple" model).[15]

Whiteley’s group also investigated mechanisms that control synergy (an increase in the ability of a pathogen to colonize/persist in a disease site and/or increase disease severity when co-infecting with other microbes) between bacterial species in both chronic and acute infections by examining polymicrobial infections found.[16] Similarly, Whiteley investigated some synergistic relationships between bacterial can affect biogeography and antibiotic susceptibility.[17]

Whiteley and his collaborator Dr. Jason Shear developed microfabricated picoliter-sized porous cavities that are able to confine a small number of cells referred to as bacterial “lobster traps" to study dense aggregates of biofilm bacteria in controlled spatial arrangements.[18] Using these traps, their teams showed that clusters of as few as ~150 bacteria can develop biofilm-like traits, including heightened antibiotic tolerance and quorum-sensing activity, despite the low cell numbers. [18]

Whiteley and his team characterized the PA transcriptome[19] and developed a quantitative framework for evaluating how accurately laboratory infection models reproduce in vivo conditions.[20] Whiteley and his group also developed a defined synthetic cystic fibrosis (CF) sputum medium (SCFM2).[21]

Honors

  • Merck Irving S. Sigal Memorial Award (2008)[22]
  • Elected Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology (2014)[5]
  • D.C. White award for Interdisciplinary Research, American Society for Microbiology (2026)[23]

References

  1. 1 2 "Marvin Whiteley". School of Biological Sciences | Georgia Institute of Technology | Atlanta, GA | Georgia Institute of Technology | Atlanta, GA. Retrieved 2026-01-13.
  2. 1 2 "SynthBiome". synthbiome. Retrieved 2026-01-13.
  3. 1 2 CF@LANTA. "CF@LANTA". CF@LANTA. Retrieved 2026-01-13.
  4. ↑ "Georgia Research Alliance". gra.org. Retrieved 2026-01-13.
  5. 1 2 "ASM Directory Search Results". myasm.asm.org. Retrieved 2026-08-20.
  6. 1 2 3 4 Whiteley, Marvin. "Marvin Whiteley". Georgia Tech Research. Georgia Institute of Technology. Retrieved 2026-08-25.
  7. ↑ "mBio Board of Editors". mBio. American Society for Microbiology. Retrieved 2026-08-25.
  8. ↑ "Alumni | McLean Lab". mcleanlab.wp.txstate.edu. Retrieved 2026-01-13.
  9. 1 2 Whiteley, Marvin. "Curriculum Vitae" (PDF). Children's Healthcare of Atlanta. Retrieved 2026-08-25.
  10. ↑ Haurwitz, Ralph K. M. (2016-09-04). "$7 million in gifts advances UT's infectious disease research". Austin American-Statesman. Retrieved 2026-01-13.
  11. ↑ "College of Natural Sciences Faculty < The University of Texas at Austin". catalog.utexas.edu. Retrieved 2026-01-13.
  12. ↑ "CMDI: Mighty Microbial Dynamics for a Healthier People and Planet". College of Sciences | Georgia Institute of Technology | Atlanta, GA. 2021-08-05. Retrieved 2026-08-19.
  13. ↑ "The American Society for Microbiology Announces New Editor in Chief | School of Chemistry & Biochemistry". chemistry.gatech.edu. Retrieved 2026-01-13.
  14. ↑ Mashburn, Lauren M.; Whiteley, Marvin (2005-09-15). "Membrane vesicles traffic signals and facilitate group activities in a prokaryote". Nature. 437 (7057): 422–425. Bibcode:2005Natur.437..422M. doi:10.1038/nature03925. ISSN 1476-4687. PMID 16163359.
  15. ↑ Schertzer, Jeffrey W.; Whiteley, Marvin (2012). "A bilayer-couple model of bacterial outer membrane vesicle biogenesis". mBio. 3 (2): e00297–11. Bibcode:2012mBio....397.11S. doi:10.1128/mBio.00297-11. ISSN 2150-7511. PMC 3312216. PMID 22415005.
  16. ↑ Stacy, Apollo; Everett, Jake; Jorth, Peter; Trivedi, Urvish; Rumbaugh, Kendra P.; Whiteley, Marvin (2014). "Bacterial fight-and-flight responses enhance virulence in a polymicrobial infection". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 111 (21): 7819–7824. Bibcode:2014PNAS..111.7819S. doi:10.1073/pnas.1400586111. PMC 4040543. PMID 24825893.
  17. ↑ Barraza, Juan P.; Whiteley, Marvin (2021). "A Pseudomonas aeruginosa Antimicrobial Affects the Biogeography but Not Fitness of Staphylococcus aureus during Coculture". mBio. 12 (2): e00047-21. doi:10.1128/mBio.00047-21. PMC 8092195. PMID 33785630.
  18. 1 2 Connell, Jodi L.; Wessel, Aimee K.; Parsek, Matthew R.; Ellington, Andrew D.; Whiteley, Marvin; Shear, Jason B. (2010-10-12). "Probing prokaryotic social behaviors with bacterial "lobster traps"". mBio. 1 (4): e00202–10. doi:10.1128/mBio.00202-10. ISSN 2150-7511. PMC 2975351. PMID 21060734.
  19. ↑ Cornforth, Daniel M.; Dees, Justine L.; Ibberson, Carolyn B.; Huse, Holly K.; Mathiesen, Inger H.; Kirketerp-Møller, Klaus; Wolcott, Randy D.; Rumbaugh, Kendra P.; Bjarnsholt, Thomas; Whiteley, Marvin (2018). "Pseudomonas aeruginosa transcriptome during human infection". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 115 (22): E5125–E5134. Bibcode:2018PNAS..115E5125C. doi:10.1073/pnas.1717525115. PMC 5984494. PMID 29760087.
  20. ↑ Cornforth, Daniel M.; Diggle, Frances L.; Melvin, Jeffrey A.; Bomberger, Jennifer M.; Whiteley, Marvin (2020-01-14). "Quantitative Framework for Model Evaluation in Microbiology Research Using Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Cystic Fibrosis Infection as a Test Case". mBio. 11 (1): e03042–19. doi:10.1128/mBio.03042-19. ISSN 2150-7511. PMC 6960289. PMID 31937646.
  21. ↑ Turner, Keith H.; Wessel, Aimee K.; Palmer, Gregory C.; Murray, Justine L.; Whiteley, Marvin (2015-03-31). "Essential genome of Pseudomonas aeruginosa in cystic fibrosis sputum". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 112 (13): 4110–4115. Bibcode:2015PNAS..112.4110T. doi:10.1073/pnas.1419677112. ISSN 1091-6490. PMC 4386324. PMID 25775563.
  22. ↑ "mBio Board of Editors". mBio. 2013. doi:10.1128/eissn.2150-7511.
  23. ↑ "ASM Announces Honorees for 2026 Awards and Prize Program". ASM.org. Retrieved 2026-01-13.
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