Download a copy of the Fall 2024 Symposium Proceedings

 

The Theobald Smith Society Fall 2024 Symposium was held Friday, 8 November at The Institute for Marine & Coastal Sciences, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ 

 

The program featured American Society for Microbiology Distinguished Lecturer Sean Crosson, PhD.  Professor Crosson is the Professor Rudolph Hugh Endowed Chair at Michigan State University. He studies mechanisms by which bacteria adapt to diverse environments, including freshwater, soil, and the interior of mammalian cells.  Prof. Crosson presented his lab's research about how Caulobacter crescentus produce a secreted polar adhesin known as the holdfast, which enables high-affinity attachment to surfaces. In the second portion of the presentation, he presented research findings on Bacteroides fragilis.  The bacterium comprises 1%–5% of the gut microbiota in healthy humans but can expand to >50% of the population in ulcerative colitis patients experiencing inflammation.  His lab found treatment of B. fragilis with a physiologically relevant concentration of the secondary bile acid deoxycholate reduced cell growth and remodeled transcription of one-quarter of the genome.  

​

Srujana (Sam) Yadavalli, our our 2024 Young Investigator Award Recipient, spoke about her lab's research into the small E. coli proteins (≤ 50 amino acids long), a rising class of stress response regulators. E. coli encodes over 150 small proteins, most of which lack phenotypes. Using magnesium limitation as a stressor, they identify stress-induced small proteins using ribosome profiling, RNA sequencing, and transcriptional reporter assays. They uncovered 17 small proteins with increased translation initiation, several of them transcriptionally upregulated by the PhoQ-PhoP two-component signaling system, crucial for magnesium homeostasis. and advancing understanding of small protein regulators in cellular signaling.

​

Speakers invited to give short talks by virtue of their interesting abstacts were as follows: 

Precious Newman, Department of Biomedical Sciences, Cooper Medical School of Rowan University, Camden, NJ.

Arkajyoti Dutta, Department of Plant Biology, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ

Liisa Veerus, Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine, Rutgers University, Piscataway,NJ

Amir George, Department of Pharmacology, Physiology and Neuroscience, Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, Newark, NJ

Naima Zaheer and Sarah Krisak, Montclair State University, NJ

Duhita G. Sant, Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ

​

For details, download the proceedings from the link above.

​