Description:

Title: "You are what you don't eat: Understanding how nutritional immunity shapes infection."

Description: Metals are essential for both fundamental physiological processes and resisting the stresses that microbes encounter. These dual roles render the use of metals essential to the ability of pathogens to cause infection. In an attempt to prevent disease, the immune response restricts the availability of metals during infection. Using Staphylococcus aureus as a model pathogen, this seminar will discuss the strategies utilized by pathogens to obtain metals during infection, focusing on a new family of metallophores and the dangers that use of these systems create. It will also discuss how pathogens regulate the use of metals to ensure the activity of essential metal-dependent processes while maintaining the ability to withstand the assault of the immune response in metal-limited environments.