Description:

Title: The Battle of Nutrients at the Host-Pathogen Interface

Speaker: Eric Skaar, PhD, MPH, Vanderbilt University

Host: Bacteriology Graduate Students and Postdocs, Patrick Woida, Coordinator

Topic:

All cells require nutrient metal to carry out essential biochemical processes. This requirement is something that the vertebrate immune system has exploited as a strategy to defend against infection by restricting microbial access to nutrient metal in a process called “nutritional immunity”. Bacterial pathogens have evolved elaborate mechanisms to circumvent nutritional immunity and acquire metal during infection. In this talk I will discuss how bacterial pathogens evade nutritional immunity to cause infection.