Members of the Host-Microbial Interactions (HMI) Core within the Department of Biological Sciences (DBS) at Auburn University focus on the fields of microbial pathogenesis, immune responses to bacterial infection, and microbiomes associated with animal and plant species. It is synergistic with other DBS Core areas in functional (meta)genomics, ecology and/or evolutionary aspects of host-microbiome interactions.  HMI research includes traditional studies of microbial physiology at the cellular and organismal level, detection and subtyping of pathogens, and molecular studies of host-microbe interactions using modern genomics, proteomics, and epigenetics approaches.