Dr. Edan Foley University of Alberta Invasion of the fruitfly snatchers: What Drosophila can teach us about Vibrio cholerae pathogenesis The aquatic pathogen Vibrio cholerae infects roughly three million people and claims 100,000 lives each year. Pathogen-encoded virulence factors activate host innate immune defenses, disrupt the gut barrier, and cause a diarrheal disease characterized by expulsion of up to 15 liters of pathogen-laden fluid daily. To infect the host, V. cholerae uses a type-six secretion system (T6SS) to attack Gram-negative members of the gut microbiota. The T6SS in induced in the small intestine, where it injects a payload of deadly effectors into commensals that compete for access to the host. Eradication of competitors allows V. cholerae to build clonal microcolonies that concentrate cholera toxin in the small intestine, activating a cAMP-dependent signal that results in severe rice-water diarrheal purges. Using the fly model of Vibrio infection, my group studies how interbacterial-warfare impacts Vibrio pathogenesis. In this seminar, I will present recent data from my group that implicates T6SS-mediated commensal killing in the inhibition of host epithelial repair during an infection.
Bio from Dr. Edan Foley : ''I did my BSc in Galway, Ireland, followed by a PhD in Cologne, a postdoctoral fellowship in San Francisco, and finally settled in Edmonton. My work primarily uses the genetically accessible model organism Drosophila melanogaster to understand how pathogenic and commensal bacteria affect stem cell development and function in the gut. More recently, we have started to extend our work to include the zebrafish Danio rerio.'' Comments are closed.
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