UChicago Department of Microbiology

🎉 Our inaugural Micro Retreat was truly unforgettable! Two days filled with enlightening scientific dialogues, bonding, and joy with our amazing community. Overwhelmed with gratitude for the memories we've created together. Dive into the highlights with our video recap! 🎥

Tomorrow's COM seminar will be Dr. Sarah Fortune from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health talking about evolving Mycobacterium tuberculosis: how drug pressure is reshaping essential and virulence processes.

Tomorrow, Baylee Heiden from the Khader/Tay lab will give a research in progress talk on characterizing early Mycobacterial interactions with airway cells.

The last COM research in progress talk will be tomorrow by Ellen Ketter in the Barriero lab talking about human epigenetic determinants of BCG-induced trained immunity.

This Friday's COM research forum will be Maddie Sheahan from the Comstock lab talking about "Properties of Nanaerobic Growth in Bacteroides" and Tonu Pius from the Missiakas lab discussing "Old Memory, New Tricks: Redirecting Staph Immunity."

Today's COM reasearch forum will be by Tess Bruner and Zoe Kellermyer talking about the clinical impact of Pseudomonas aeruginosa gastrointestinal colonization and the role of Lon-dependent proteolysis in Acinetobacter baumanii dessication resistance, respectively.

Tomorrow's COM seminar is Dr. Stephen Trent from the University of Georgia Foundation talking about pushing the envelope: building and maintaining the Gram-negative cell surface.

Tomorrow's COM research forum will be Yunys Perez-Betancourt in the Missiakas lab talking about decoding persistent nasopharyngeal colonization by Staphylococcus aureus.

Tomorrow's COM work in progress will be Izzy Izquierdo from the Randall lab talking about mechanisms of proviral lipophagy in dengue virus egress.

Today's COM seminar is by Helen Beilinson in the Golovkina lab talking about resistance of YBR/Ei mice to viral and bacterial pathogens.

Today's COM research talk is Leila Tuzlak in the Comstock lab, talking about the genetic architecture of a Bacteroides T6SS encoded on an ICE.

This week's COM invited seminar speaker is Dr. Karen Ottermann from the University of California-Santa Cruz, talking about flagellar motors that incorporate parts of type 4 pili to fine tune bacterial motiliy responses.

Tomorrow COM will have two WIP talks from the Randall lab: Peter Wang talking about mechanisms of interferon-mediated inhibition reveal host–virus Interactions in murine Norovirus; and Isabel Izquierdo on elucidating mechanisms of proviral lipophagy in dengue virus egress.

Today's COM invited speaker is Dr. Derek Walsh from Northwestern University, talking about why nuclei rotate during cytomegalovirus infection.

Today's COM work-in-progress talk will be by Amanda Blocker in the Missiakas lab, talking about mucinases and mucin-binding domain proteins in pathogenic bacilli.

This week COM seminar will be by Dr. Aimee Shen from Tufts University School of Medicine, talking about analyzing Clostridioides difficile heterogeneity in vivo and in vitro.

Tomorrow's COM seminar will be Maddie Maslyar talking about the genetic control of staphylococcus colonization in mice.

Tomorrow's COM seminar will be by Shafi Azam in the Missiakas lab talking about a SecA-associated peptidase that modulates surface protein display and cytokinesis in S. aureus.

Tomorrow's COM work-in-progress will be by Haley Flick in the Roy Chowdhury lab, talking about the contribution of commensal γδ T cell interactions of the host defense mechanism against M. tuberculosis.

Today's COM seminar is Kim Orth from the University of Texas-Southwestern talking about "Black Spot, Black Death, Black Pearl: the Tales of Bacterial Effectors."

Tomorrow's COM seminar will be by Corey Rundquist in the Coleman lab talking about building a functional and phylogenetic genome atlas of the Great Lakes.