Dragana Gagic

Dragana Gagic completed her PhD in molecular biology at Massey University, New Zealand, under supervision of Dr Jasna Rakonjac before moving to AgResearch to work as a postdoctoral scientist in the microbial genomics team.

During her PhD Dragana developed and applied a conditional phage display system to select for the bacterial secretome of probiotic bacteria.

Functional characterisation of identified secretome proteins resulted in a discovery of a new type of aggregation factor possibly involved in exclusion or reduction of adhesion of enteropathogenic bacteria.

Application of this method, at metagenomic scale, will have a major advantage over current methods for identification proteins that mediate interactions with the host and environment; it will allow direct functional capture of proteins of interest, such as plant material-binding proteins from uncultivated or rare phylotypes.