Dr. Pegah Kalatehjari

Pegah joined the University of Vienna's Department of Microbiology and Ecosystem Science after completing her Ph.D. in Natural Resources Engineering at Gorgan University in Iran. During her doctoral research, she investigated the optimal feeding conditions for medicinal leeches, focusing on how different blood sources affect their growth, survival, salivary gland activity, and hirudin gene expression. As part of her Ph.D., she had the opportunity to study at the University of Greifswald, Germany, where she worked on the molecular characterization of anticoagulants and anti-platelet factors in leeches. This research involved applying molecular genetics and functional characterization methods to understand the evolutionary basis of the blood-sucking lifestyle in leeches. In her current postdoctoral role, Pegah further expands her research by studying symbiont transmission and the molecular and microbial adaptations to hematophagy in leeches.

• Anticoagulants and platelet aggregation inhibitors in the salivary glands of hematophagous leeches.
• Microbiota across leech species and producing reference chromosome-level genomes for biodiversity, evolution, and genomics research.
• Culture of medicinal leeches and analyzing gene expression and salivary gland physiology.
• Antifungal effects of nanoparticles on fish pathogens.
• Applying molecular genetics techniques to investigate Symbiont transmission in leeches.