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Nich­olas J. Shikuma: Elu­cid­at­ing the Mech­an­isms of Bac­teria-Stim­u­lated An­imal Meta­morph­osis

Nov 21, 2022
Join our in­vit­a­tional sem­inar!

Monday, Novem­ber 21, 2022
in the new MPI lec­ture hall 4012 at 3:00 p.m. (15:00 Uhr) (Don´t forget to bring a mask!!!)

Nicholas J. Shikuma (De­part­ment of Bio­logy, San Diego State Uni­versity, USA)

will give a sem­inar with the title:

"Elucidating the Mechanisms of Bacteria-Stimulated Animal Metamorphosis"

You are wel­come to join.

 
Lecture hall
Lecture hall

Elucidating the Mechanisms of Bacteria-Stimulated Animal Metamorphosis

A cur­rently en­ig­matic sym­bi­osis in the ocean is the stim­u­la­tion of an­imal meta­morph­osis by bac­teria; a phe­nomenon that seeds new an­im­als to es­tab­lish or main­tain benthic eco­sys­tems. Dur­ing these host-mi­crobe in­ter­ac­tions, the swim­ming lar­vae of an­im­als such as cor­als and tube­worms identify a de­sir­able loc­a­tion on the sea­floor to un­dergo meta­morph­osis based on the pres­ence of spe­cific sur­face-bound bac­teria. In this talk, I will present our dis­cov­ery that bac­teria pro­duce a pre­vi­ously un­des­cribed syr­inge-lik e struc­ture that in­jects a stim­u­lat­ory pro­tein into the lar­vae of tube­worms, trig­ger­ing meta­morph­osis. In re­sponse to this stim­u­lat­ory pro­tein, the de­vel­op­mental pro­gram of tube­worm meta­morph­osis is me­di­ated by con­served sig­nal­ing sys­tems in­clud­ing Pro­tein Kinase C and two newly iden­ti­fied Nuc­lear Hor­mone Re­cept­ors. Ad­di­tion­ally, I will dis­cuss our cur­rent ef­fort to em­ploy syn­thetic bio­logy tools in mar­ine bac­teria to study bio­chem­ic­ally dif­fer­ent bac­terial products that stim­u­late an­imal meta­morph­osis. Our re­search has led to a pre­vi­ously un­des­cribed mech­an­ism of bac­teria-stim­u­lated an­imal de­vel­op­ment and provides an ex­ample of the power of fun­da­mental re­search as an en­gine for sci­entific dis­cov­ery.

To join the sem­inar on­line, please use the fol­low­ing link:

 

For fur­ther in­form­a­tion, please get in touch!

 
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