Time: 1:00 - 2:00pm Speaker: Professor Ramesh Wigneshweraraj, Imperial College LondonVenue: Fogg Lecture Theatre, G.E Fogg Building
In this SBCS Thursday seminar, Professor Ramesh Wigneshweraraj of Imperial College London will deliver a talk on bacterial physiology and pathogenesis.
Professor Ramesh Wigneshweraraj's research is focused on two aspects broadly related to bacterial physiology and pathogenesis:
Adaptive strategies of bacteria to nutrient starvation
Conditions that sustain constant bacterial growth are seldom found in nature. Bacterial growth is often limited by availability of nutrients; soil, water, and even host environments such as macrophages can lack essential nutrients to support growth. Hence, many bacteria spend the majority of their time in states of little or no growth because they are starved of essential nutrients. The nutrient-starved and growth-attenuated state is now widely considered as an important physiological state in bacterial pathogenesis and survival. Prof Wigneshweraraj's research group uses nitrogen starvation as a model nutrient stress to study the temporal changes in the transcriptome of Escherichia coli during sustained nitrogen starvation, the regulatory basis underpinning these changes and the consequences of their dysregulation to bacterial tolerance to antibacterial stresses and survival.
Host(ile) Takeover strategies of phages
Phages have evolved diverse and sophisticated mechanisms to take-over essential host processes to facilitate the successful development of phage progeny. Many such host takeover mechanisms involve small proteins that interact with and repurpose, inhibit or modulate the activity of essential bacterial enzymes, which as a consequence, often result in the demise of the bacterial cell. Prof Wigneshweraraj's group study the phage-encoded antibacterial small proteins and their bacterial targets at a molecular level not only to unravel new phage biology, but also to inform and inspire the discovery of novel antibacterial strategies.
This seminar is open to all and free to attend, no registration required.