After completing a postdoctoral fellowship in Microbiology at the University of Chicago, Skaar joined the Vanderbilt faculty in 2005 as an assistant professor, and was named to the endowed Ernest W. Goodpasture Chair in Pathology in 2012.
The Skaar laboratory is interested in identifying the host and bacterial factors that are involved in this competition for metal during the host-pathogen interaction.
In particular, they focus on diseases caused by the human pathogens Staphylococcus aureus, Acinetobacter baumannii, Bacillus anthracis (Anthrax), and Clostridioides difficile.
[2] Dr. Skaar and his team discovered that the innate immune protein calprotectin inhibits microbial growth through manganese binding, representing the first example of the host immune system sequestering manganese to inhibit microbial growth .
ZNG1 is responsible for transferring zinc to METAP1, a critical metalloprotein involved in regulating protein activity across eukaryotes.
[4] In addition, the Skaar laboratory has reported the discovery of iron storage organelles in Gram positive bacteria called ferrosomes,[5] and bacterial hydrophilins that promote dessication resistance in hospital acquired pathogens.
Dietary zinc alters the microbiota and decreases resistance to Clostridium difficile infection.