DATE:

Friday, May 6, 2022

TIME:

3:30 PM

LOCATION:

NLS 101

SPEAKER:

Dr. Albert Siryaporn, Biological Physics, University of CA, Irvine

ABSTRACT:

Cells are biological units that organize into structures that give rise to new properties and collective functions. Bacteria are one of the simplest and oldest forms of life and exist as individual cells. Individual bacterial cells self-organize with other bacteria into dense collectives known as biofilms. I will describe the work our lab has performed on phenomena that emerge due to physical interactions between neighboring bacterial cells in biofilms. In particular, we have investigated emergent phenomena in bacteria that are in moving fluids, on porous surfaces, and in animals. We find that bacteria self-organize and disperse in complex fluidic networks using a

cyclical process that we have termed dynamic switching. On surfaces, we find that bacterial collectives produce a layer of viscous fluid that transports them across relatively large distances. In animals, find a novel immune defense mechanism that infiltrates bacterial cells and reorganizes their DNA, thus killing bacteria with high efficacy. These observations have important implications for how bacteria resist current antibiotics and for the development of new antibiotics. Our work uncovers the remarkable emergent properties of bacterial collectives, which endow them with extraordinary resilience against a wide range of challenges.

Bio: Dr. Siryaporn received his Ph.D. in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Pennsylvania exploring how biological systems maintain proper signaling without cross-talk between different networks. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University in the Dept. of Molecular Biology, where he investigated how bacteria interpret and respond to mechanical stimuli. He received the NIH NRSA postdoctoral fellowship and NIH K22 faculty transition award. Since 2016, he has been an assistant professor in the Dept. of Physics and Astronomy and Dept. of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry at the University of California at Irvine. He has received major research grants from the NIH including the R21 and R56 grants. His lab uses approaches from systems biology, biological physics, and molecular biology to investigate the dynamics of life in bacteria.

HOST:

Parag Katira

VIDEO: