Microbiology Seminar Series
Spring 2023
10 Jan Malcolm Winkler Indiana Regulation of Peptidoglycan Synthesis at the Pathway and Protein Dynamics Levels in the Ovoid-Shaped Pathogen Streptococcus pneumoniae Scott Hultgren 17 Jan Alexis Kaushansky Seattle Children’s The role of host phosphosignaling networks in controlling infection Daniel Goldberg 24 Jan David Russell Cornell In vivo heterogeneity of host and pathogen drives disease outcome in tuberculosis Christina Stallings & Jen Philips 31 Jan Brenda Bass Utah Divergent Roles of Dicer’s Helicase Domain in Antiviral Defense David Wang 7 Feb Bree Aldridge Tufts The long and the short of it: paths to engineering TB treatment Christina Stallings 14 Feb John Bell Ottawa Hospital Research Institute Luis Casorla (Postdoc) 21 Feb Jan Carette Standford Genetic Dissection of Viral Pathogenesis and Host Defense Carolina Lopez 28 Feb Andrew Goodman Yale Mario Feldman 14 Mar Viviana Simon Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai COVID-19 Ali Ellebedy 28 Mar Nihal Altan-Bonnet National Institutes of Health Coronaviruses and egress Marjorie Cornejo-Pontelli (Postdoc Whelan Lab) 4 Apr M. Kariuki Njenga ESU Global Health- Kenya Washington State University Sean Whelan 11 Apr Ansel Hsiao University of California, Riverside Andrew Kau 18 Apr Michael Emerman Fred Hutch, Seattle Cancer Care Alliance and UW Medicine The origins of HIV-1 through the lens of host-virus interactions Sebla Kutluay 25 Apr Judith Berman Tel Aviv University Genetic and physiological routes to antifungal drug tolerance Tamara Doering 2 May Joanne Flynn University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine Unraveling protection against tuberculosis Christina Stallings & Jen Philips 9 May Bryan Bryson MIT Host pathogen interactions in tuberculosis Christina Stallings 16 May Wendy Barclay Imperial College London Siyuan Ding 23 May Michael Farzan University of Florida Liang Shan
Fall 2022
20 Sept | Ana Flores Mireles | University of Notre Dame | Deficiencies in the fibrinolytic system predisposes the host to develop a catheter-associated urinary tract infection | Michael Caparon |
27 Sept | Michele LeRoux | Washington University in St. Louis | Toxin-antitoxin systems mediate bacterial immunity to phage | |
4 Oct | Ali Ellebedy | Washington University of St. Louis | B Cell Response to mRNA Vaccination in Humans: Learning from ‘Experiments of Nature’ | |
11 Oct | Damian J Krysan | University of Iowa | Genetic Interaction Analysis of Fungal Pathogens | Tamara Doering |
18 Oct | M. Stephen Trent | University of Georgia | Pushing the Envelope: Building and Maintaining the Gram-negative Outer Membrane | Mario Feldman |
25 Oct | William McCoy | Washington University in St. Louis | Acne, Antibiotics, and Arthroplasties | Siyuan Ding |
1 Nov | Photini Sinnis | Johns Hopkins University | The Establishment of Malaria Infection: Parasite Bottleneck and Point for Intervention | Daniel Goldberg |
8 Nov | Rachel Fearns | Boston University | Interplay between cellular nucleotide biosynthesis and pneumovirus transcription and genome replication | Sebastien Felt, Postdoc |
15 Nov | Vern Carruthers | University of Michigan | Toxoplasma strategically exploits host ESCRTs for nutrient salvage from infected cells | David Sibley |
22 Nov | Aaron Schmidt | Harvard Medical School | Eliciting antibodies to conserved viral sites and their role in viral evolution | Sean Whelan |
29 Nov | Sanjay Ram | University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School | Harnessing virulence factors to develop vaccines and immunotherapies against Neisseria gonorrhoeae | Hrishikesh Kulkarni |
6 Dec | Shumin Tan | Tufts University | Illuminating Mycobacterium tuberculosis exploitation of environmental ionic cues during infection | Jen Philips |
13 Dec | Harry B. Greenberg | Stanford University | Rotavirus pathogenesis and immunity | Siyuan Ding |
Spring 2022
11 Jan | Nathan Sherer | University of Wisconsin | Single-cell dynamics of HIV-1 gene expression and virion production | Sebla Kutluay |
18 Jan | Stephen Lory | Harvard | Regulation of Pseudomonas aeruginosa virulence and antibiotic resistance by small non-coding RNAs | Phil Tarr and Sean Whelan |
25 Jan | Kartik Chandran | Albert Einstein College of Medicine | Dissecting and Disabling the Spike Proteins of Enveloped Viruses | Sean Whelan |
1 Feb | Cynthia Sears | Johns Hopkins | Unraveling the mechanisms of biofilms in CRC | Andy Kau |
8 Feb | Karine Gibbs | UC Berkeley | Micro-crowdsourcing: how swarming bacteria integrate signals to build communities | Forrest Walker |
15 Feb | Elina Zuniga | UC San Diego | Induction and Exhaustion of Interferons After Viral Infection | Shabaana Khader |
22 Feb | Ben Garcia | WashU | Mass spectrometry based proteomics for understanding viral infections | |
1 Mar | Sebastian Winter | UT Southwestern | Canceled | Mario Feldman |
1 Mar | Mario Feldman | WashU | Dissecting the virulence strategies of Acinetobacter baumannii | |
8 Mar | Joe DeRisi | UCSF/Biohub | Pandemic Stories at the intersection of Basic Science and Public Health | David Wang |
15 Mar | Michael Bachman | University of Michigan | Klebsiella Pathogenesis: Colonization, Infection, and the Accessory Genome | David Rosen |
22 Mar | John D. MacMicking | Yale University School of Medicine | Biological Systems of Cell Defense: New Nanomachines for Immunity to Infection | Siyuan Ding |
29 Mar | Maziar Divangahi | McGill University | The nuts and bolts of macrophages in pulmonary infectious diseases | Shabaana Khader |
5 Apr | Rita Tamayo | U of NC Chapel Hill | Mechanisms and functions of phenotypic heterogeneity in Clostridioides difficile | Mario Feldman |
12 Apr | Beatriz Fontoura | UT Southwestern | Viral-Host Interactions with Intranuclear Pathways | Jacco Boon |
19 Apr | Peggy Cotter | UNC | Bordetella filamentous hemagglutinin: a phagocyte-specific toxin delivery system? | Vogel |
26 Apr | Robert Cramer | Dartmouth | Aspergillus fumigatus biofilm mediated disease progression and drug resistance | Tamara Doering |
3 May | Bree Aldridge | Tufts | Canceled | Christina Stallings |
3 May | Christina Stallings | WashU | Inflammation as a Driver of Mycobacterium tuberculosis pathogenesis |
Fall 2021
Sep 28 | Kit Pogliano | UCSD | How to build an endospore and accelerate antibiotic drug discovery | Scott Hultgren |
Oct 05 | Nancy Keller | University of Wisconsin | Aspergillus fumigatus exometabolites mediating Multi-Kingdom interactions at the microbe and host interface | Jeff Henderson & Mary Dinauer |
Oct 12 | Harris Wang | Columbia University | Mapping & Modifying the Gut Microbiome in New Dimensions | Tae Seok Moon |
Oct 19 | Haina Shin | Washington University in St. Louis | Innate immune control of disease outcomes during mucosal viral infection | Sebla Kutluay & Tamara Doering |
Oct 26 | Benhur Lee | Icahn School of medicine at Mount Sinai | Interferon-silent Sendai virus mediated CRISPR-Cas9 editing in human cells | Carolina Lopez |
Nov 02 | Jeff Dvorin | Harvard University, Boston Children’s | One ring to rule them all — discovering novel cell biology in malaria parasite | Dan Goldberg |
Nov 09 | Ferric Fang | University of Washington | Pathogenesis of Enteric Fever | Mary Dinauer & Jeff Henderson |
Nov 16 | Alexander Ploss | Princeton University | Looking under the hood of a killer virus: new insights into the molecular biology of hepatitis B virus | Liang Shan |
Nov 23 | Margaret A. Scull | University of Maryland | At the Interface: Influenza Virus – Mucin Interactions in the Airway | Gaya Amarasinghe |
Nov 30 | David Rosen | Washington University in St. Louis | Klebsiella pneumoniae: Formidable Foe Necessitating a Multipronged Approach | |
Dec 07 | Rob Knight | UC San Diego | Scaling microbiome analyses to millions of samples | Olivia Gorushi, Student |
Spring 2021
Jan 12 | Nir Drayman | The University of Chicago | Single Cell Virology (and drug repurposing efforts against SARS-CoV-2) | Carolina Lopez |
Jan 19 | Mary Estes | Baylor College of Medicine | Translating Stem Cell Biology to Understand Human Gastrointestinal Infections | Siyuan Ding |
Jan 26 | Anna Kuchina | University of Washington | Exploring microbial phenotypic diversity with single-cell RNA sequencing | Christina Stallings |
Feb 02 | Jacob Yount | Ohio State University | Beneficial and detrimental effects of type I interferons in virus infections | Carolina Lopez |
Feb 09 | Kevin Forsberg | Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center | The Hidden World of CRISPR-Cas Inhibitors | Michael Caparon |
Feb 16 | Thierry Diagana | Novartis | Discovery and advancement of new drugs for malaria and neglected tropical diseases | David Sibley |
Feb 23 | Filipa Rijo-Ferreira | UT Southwestern | Circadian rhythms in parasitic diseases: an underlying clock of malaria parasites | David Sibley |
Mar 02 | Natacha Ruiz | Ohio State University | Priority shipping: sending building blocks to the outer membrane | Michael Caparon |
Mar 09 | Eleftherios “Lefteris” Michailidis | The Rockefeller University | Modeling chronic hepatitis B infections in hepatocyte systems | Carolina Lopez |
Mar 16 | Boyuan Wang | MIT | Regulation of Metabolism and Viability of Bacteria by the Nucleotides (p)ppGpp and (p)ppApp | Christina Stallings |
Mar 23 | Matthew Chapman | University of Michigan | Polymerizing the Fiber Between Functional Amyloids and Pathogenic Neurodegenerative Disease | Scott Hultgren |
Mar 30 | Jason McClellan | Sean Whelan | ||
Apr 06 | Philip Kranzusch | Harvard Medical School | cGAS-like enzymes in immunity and host-microbe signaling | Sean Whelan |
Apr 13 | James Collins | UT Southwestern | Sex, drugs, and worms: developing a better understanding of schistosome biology to advance new therapies | Christina Stallings |
Apr 20 | Tobi Spielmann | Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine, Hamburg | Influence of nutrient access on drug action and resistance in malaria parasites | Dan Goldberg |
Apr 27 | Clare Smith | Duke University | A host-pathogen genetic map of tuberculosis susceptibility | Shabaana Khader |
May 04 | John Whitney | McMaster University | Molecular Basis for Chaperone Assisted Loading of Antibacterial Toxins onto a Bacterial Nanomachine | Mario Feldman |
Fall 2020
Sept 22 | Nicolas Manel | Institute Curie | Activation of innate immune sensors by viruses and self | Sebla Kutluay |
Sept 29 | Terry Dermody | University of Pittsburgh | A protein-folding network required for reovirus capsid assembly | Megan Baldridge |
Oct 06 | Anita Sil | University of California, San Francisco | Control of virulence and cell shape by temperature in Histoplasma capsulatum | Tamara Doering |
Oct 13 | Bill Powderly | Washington University | SARS CoV infection – learning from epidemiology | David Wang |
Oct 20 | Carey-Ann Burnham | Washington University | 2020: A diagnostic testing odyssey | Tamara Doering |
Oct 27 | Mike Diamond | Washington University | Developing countermeasures to emerging RNA viruses: Stopping viruses at the point of attack | Joseph Vogel |
Nov 03 | Rachel Presti & Jane O’Halloran | Washington University | Update on clinical research on COVID-19 | David Wang |
Nov 10 | Siyuan Ding | Washington University | SARS-CoV-2 in the gut: a fluid and crappy situation | Joseph Vogel |
Nov 17 | Ali Ellebedy | Washington University | B cell and antibody responses to respiratory viral infections | Tamara Doering |
Dec 01 | Kim Davis | Johns Hopkins | Keeping the stress to a minimum: cooperation between subpopulations of Yersinia pseudotuberculosis during infection | Joseph Vogel |
Spring 2020
14-Jan | Floyd Wormley | University of Texas, San Antonio | Induction of Protective Immunity Against Pulmonary Cryptococcosis | Liza Miller, Student |
21-Jan | James Cassat | Vanderbilt | Bone appetit: Host-pathogen interactions during osteomyelitis | Julie Wardenburg |
28-Jan | Beth McCormick | University of Massachusetts | The ABC’s of Microbial Regulation of Lipid Immuno-modulators in Interested Health and Disease | Phil Tarr |
4-Feb | Sarah Stanley | University of California, Berkeley | Metabolic regulation of M. tuberculosis infection | Stallings & J Philips |
11-Feb | Keith Gull | Oxford University, UK | What has the Genome ever done for us? Understanding Kinetoplastid parasite structure, function and pathogenicity | Steve Beverley |
18-Feb | Felipe Cava | Umea University | D-amino acids shape the environmental microbial diversity | Mario Feldman |
25-Feb | Christina Cuomo | Broad Institute | Genomic epidemiology and evolution of Candida auris, a multidrug-resistant emerging fungal pathogen | Tamara Doering |
3-Mar | David Tobin | Duke | Canceled | Christina Stallings |
10-Mar | John Boothroyd | Stanford Medical School | Canceled | Steve Beverley |
17-Mar | Peggy Cotter | University of North Carolina | Canceled | Joe Vogel |
24-Mar | Ferric Fang | University of Washington | Canceled | Mary Dinauer |
31-Mar | Sean Whelan | Washington University | Minus-Strand RNA Virus Polymerases – How Small Cofactors Regulate Large Multifunctional Proteins | Tamara Doering |
7-Apr | Elina Zuniga | University of California, San Diego | Canceled | Shabaana Khader |
14-Apr | Beatriz Fontoura | University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center | Canceled | Jacco Boon |
21-Apr | Nancy Keller | University of Wisconsin, Madison | Canceled | Jeff Henderson |
28-Apr | Rita Tamayo | University of North Carolina | Canceled | Mario Feldman |
5-May | Judy Berman | Tel Aviv University | Canceled | Tamara Doering |
Fall 2019
Sept 24 | Juan Martinez | Louisiana State University | Spotted Fever Group Rickettsia-host cell interactions: a tale of the Trojan Horse. | Scott Hultgren |
Oct 1 | Mario Feldman | Washington University | Selfish MDR plasmids take control of gene regulation and pathogenesis in Acinetobacter baumannii | Shabaana Khader |
Oct 8 | Juan Alfonzo | Ohio State | Dynamic interplay between tRNA transport and processing: On the possibility of tunable modifications | Dan Goldberg |
Oct 15 | Dan Portnoy | University of California, Berkeley | How intracellular pathogens sense the host cell and vice versa and the serendipitous discovery that Listeria monocytogenes is electrogenic | Joe Vogel |
Oct 22 | Rachel Dutton | University of California, San Diego | Dissecting microbiomes using cheese | Greg Harrison, Student |
Oct 29 | Igor Almeida | University of Texas, El Paso | alpha-Gal glycotopes as effective chemotherapy biomarkers and glycovaccines for Chagas disease and leishmaniasis | Steve Beverley |
Nov 05 | Sam Behar | University of Massachusetts | Recognizing the Problem: T cell recognition of Mycobacterium tuberculosis infected macrophages | Shabaana Khader |
Nov 12 | Barbara Rehermann | National Institutes of Health | Natural versus laboratory world: Wild mouse microbiota improve host fitness and preclinical models | Dave Wang |
Nov 19 | Adam Burgener | University of Manitoba | The microbiome in mucosal immunity and HIV Transmission | Amanda Lewis |
Nov 26 | Victoria D’Souza | Harvard | Structures of the HIV genome: Insights into regulation of reverse transcription, transcription and translation | Jacco Boon |
Dec 03 | David Underhill | Cedars-Sinai Medical Center | A Role for Commensal Fungi in Inflammatory Bowel Disease? | Jenny Lodge |
Dec 10 | Florian Krammer | Mount Sinai School of Medicine | Antibody responses to conserved epitopes on the influenza virus glycoproteins | Ali Ellebedy |
Spring 2019
Jan 29 | Julie Overbaugh | Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center | The potential of international collaborations for HIV prevention: Studies of mother-infant transmission | Michael Diamond |
Feb 05 | Carla Saleh | Pasteur Institute | Small RNAs and antiviral defense in insects | David Wang |
Feb 12 | Andrew Gewirtz | Georgia State University | Gut microbiota, diet, chronic inflammation, and metabolic syndrome | Phil Tarr |
Feb 19 | Peter Greenberg | University of Washington | Communication, Cooperation and Conflict in the Microbial World: Targets for Therapeutic Development? | Omar Delannoy-Bruno, Student |
Feb 26 | Galit Alter | Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard | The role of antibodies in TB infection | Christina Stallings |
Mar 05 | Samuel Behar | University of Massachusetts | Canceled | Shabaana Khader |
Mar 12 | Deborah Lenschow | Washington University | Chikungunya virus arthritis: New ingiths into pathogenesis and treatment | David Wang |
Mar 19 | Alan Aderem | Center for Infectious Disease Research | Canceled | Jen Philips & Scott Hultgren |
Mar 26 | Scott Gray-Owen | University of Toronto | Playing with fire: The fine line between immunity and immunopathogenesis | Jim Fleckenstein |
Apr 02 | Darren Higgins | Harvard Medical School | From gastroenteritis to meningoencephalitis: How Listeria monocytogenescrosses the blood-brain barrier to infect the brain | Mario Feldman & Shabaana Khader |
Apr 09 | Amariliz Rivera | Rutgers- New Jersey Medical School | Type III interferon is a critical regulator of innate antifungal immunity | Christina Stallings |
Apr 16 | Wei-Shau Hu | National Institutes of Health | How does HIV-1 transfer its genetic information to progeny? | Sebla Kutluay |
Apr 23 | Igor Brodsky | University of Pennsylvania | Apoptotic and non-apoptotic functions of cell death pathways in anti-microbial host defense | Christina Stallings |
Apr 30 | Jörn Coers | Duke University | Interferon-inducible GTPases in host defense and inflammation | Jen Philips |
May 07 | Lori Burrows | McMaster University | Old drugs, new tricks – using bacterial biofilms to reveal cryptic antibiotic activity | Mario Feldman |
Fall 2018
Sept 18 | Jo Handelsman | University of Wisconsin, Madison | Drosophila microbiome influences fly behavior | Lisa Drewy |
Sept 25 | Margaret A. Phillips | University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center | Metabolic enzymes as drug targets in parasitic protozoa | Daniel Goldberg |
Oct 02 | Emmie De Wit | Rocky Mountain Lab National Institutes of Health/NIAID | Pathogenesis of Nipah virus and other emerging respiratory viruses | Jacco Boon |
Oct 09 | Hiten Madhani | University of California, San Francisco | Epigenetic memory over geological timescales | Tamara Doering |
Oct 16 | Miriam Braunstein | University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill | A novel protein export chaperone for a set of Mycobacterium tuberculosis virulence effectors | Joseph Vogel |
Oct 23 | Andy Fire | Stanford University | Opportunistic RNAs and acquisitive genomes | David Wang |
Oct 30 | Alejandro Aballay | Oregon Health Center University | Neural control of response against bacterial infections and immune homeostasis | Mario Feldman |
Nov 06 | Roy Curtiss III | University of Florida | Protective immunity enhanced Salmonella vaccine vector platforms | Michael Caparon |
Nov 13 | Julie Bubeck-Wardenburg | Washington University | Bacterial Toxins – Architects of long term health outcomes in the host? | Joseph Vogel |
Nov 20 | Michaela Gack | University of Chicago | Intracellular RNA- and TRIM protein-mediated antiviral defense mechanisms | Sebla Kutluay |
Nov 27 | Noam Cohen | University of Pennsylvania | The role of taste receptors in upper respiratory innate immunity | Andrew Kau |
Dec 04 | Renee Tsolis | University of California, Davis | ER stress: a pattern of pathogenesis during infection with intracellular bacteria | Joseph Vogel |
Spring 2018
Jan 23 | Nels Elde | University of Utah | Evolutionary innovations from biological collisions | David Wang |
Jan 30 | Michael Shiloh | University of Texas Southwestern | Close encounters of the microbial kind: How Mycobacterium tuberculosis traverses the mucosal barrier | Christina Stallings |
Feb 06 | Edward Miao | University of North Carolina | NK cells and CTLs clear intracellular bacteria via caspase-7 | Brian Edelson |
Feb 13 | Lakshmi Rajagopol | University of Washington | Understanding group B Streptococcus infections | Amanda Lewis |
Feb 20 | Margaret Phillips | University of Texas Southwestern | Canceled | Dan Goldberg |
Feb 27 | Christina Stallings | Washington University | Surviving Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection from the perspective of the pathogen and the host | Steve Beverley |
Mar 06 | Christine Jacobs-Wagner | Yale University | What makes the Lyme disease bacterium tick? | Scott Hultgren |
Mar 13 | Victor Torres | New York University | Staphylococcus aureus leukocidins: from receptor identification to unraveling their role in pathogenesis | Caparon & Vogel |
Mar 20 | Sergio Grinstein | University of Toronto | Signaling phagocytosis: role of receptors, integrins and the cytoskeleton | Jennifer Philips |
Mar 27 | Eran Elivan | Weizmann Institute of Science | Host microbiome interactions in health and disease | Andrew Kau |
Apr 03 | Steve Higgs | Kansas State University | Virus-vector-vertebrate interactions | Gary Weil |
Apr 10 | Sunny Shin | University of Pennsylvania | Innate immune defense against intracellular bacterial pathogens | Joe Vogel |
Apr 17 | No Seminar | |||
Apr 24 | Xiaorong Lin | University of Georgia | Morphogenesis, sexual reproduction and cryptococcosis | Tamara Doering |
May 01 | Paul D. Bieniasz | Rockefeller University | Intrinsic host defense against retroviruses | Sebla Kutluay |
May 08 | Amanda Lewis | Washington University | A single member of the vaginal microbiota drives colonization and disease by diverse urogenital pathogens | Scott Hultgren |
Fall 2017
Sept 19 | Robert Abramovitch | Michigan State University | Small molecules that inhibit Mycobacterium tuberculosis environmental sensing and virulence | Christina Stallings |
Sept 26 | Jacco Boon | Washington University | RNA structures and packaging of Influenza virus genome | Sebla Kutluay |
Oct 03 | Chris Whitfield | University of Guelph | Assembly of microbial glycolipids | Mario Feldman |
Oct 10 | Joe Smith | Center for Infectious Disease Research | Dissecting cerebral malaria pathogenesis | Dan Goldberg |
Oct 17 | Joshua Blodgett | Washington University | Drugs from bugs: Harnessing actinomycete secondary metabolism to address therapeutic needs | Joe Vogel |
Oct 24 | Shabaana Khader | Washington University | Host immunity to tuberculosis: A balancing act | Dave Wang |
Oct 31 | Jonathan Miner | Washington University | Is Zika virus unique? Defining the capacity of multiple arboviruses to cause congenital disease | Dave Wang |
Nov 07 | Stuart Levitz | University of Massachusetts | Vaccine development against Cryptococcus: The baker delivers the antigens | Jennifer Lodge & Tamara Doering |
Nov 14 | Galit Alter | Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard | Canceled | Christina Stallings |
Nov 21 | Ana Fernandez Sesma | Mount Sinai | Immune evasion mechanisms by dengue virus | Mike Diamond |
Nov 28 | Joanne Engel | University of California, San Francisco | Obligate intracellular pathogens are master cell biologists: Decoding the Chlamydia inclusion membrane interactome | Joe Vogel |
Dec 05 | Robert Davey | Texas Biomedical | Macropinocytosis seen through the eyes of Ebola virus | Gay Amarasinghe |
Dec 12 | Shelley Payne | University of Texas | Role of cardiolipin in the intracellular lifestyle of Shigella flexneri | Phil Tarr |