CB4990 Cellular Biology Senior Seminar 2005: Cellular Biology of Infection:

This class will meet each Wednesday 8 a.m. to 8:50 a.m. in room 625 Biological Sciences Building. We will discuss primary data papers covering research in the area of cell biology of infection. This will span a broad area of infectious organisms including parasites, bacteria, viruses and prions. We will mix 'classic' papers that represent major breakthroughs as well as very recent articles at the cutting edge of current infectious disease research. The focus will be on cellular and molecular mechanisms that infectious agents use to invade, to undermine the hosts counter measures and to cause disease. The expectation is that *every* student has read the paper to be discussed during each given meeting. We will go through the paper figure by figure following the experiments described. For each figure another student will be asked to describe what was done, why and what was learned. That keeps everybody awake. This is not a lecture course and most of the contributions will come from the students. Dr. Striepen will help to guide the discussion and provide back up information where needed but please feel very much 'in charge' of this class. The papers covered in the seminars are posted as pdf files (you will need the free adobe acrobat reader to read these files on your computer). In any case all journals used are available at the UGA Science Library . The grading scheme is A-F.

Schedule for Fall 2005:

W 8/24 What is infection?  
    Getting in, out and around.  
W 8/31 Enteropathogenic E. coli (EPEC) Transfers Its Receptor for Intimate Adherence into Mammalian Cells
Animation page at HHMI
W 9/7 Real-time imaging of type III secretion: Salmonella
SipA injection into host cells
You can also look at the figures of this paper online for better quality figures at http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/102/35/12548 Note that the paper has some supplementary figures and a movie online at http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/0503407102/DC1
High resolution images of the secretion needle
W
9/14 Dr. Striepen out of town, students devastated to miss a class.  
W
9/21 Autophagy Is a Defense Mechanism Inhibiting BCG and Mycobacterium
tuberculosis Survival in Infected Macrophages
(Dr. Mary Hondalus)
 
W 9/28 The Exocytosis-regulatory Protein Synaptotagmin VII Mediates Cell Invasion by Trypanosoma cruzi
 
W
10/5 Toxoplasma Invasion of Mammalian Cells Is Powered by the Actin Cytoskeleton of the Parasite
 
W 10/12 L. monocytogenes-Induced Actin Assembly Requires the actA Gene Product, a Surface Protein
 
    Causing Disease  
W 10/19 Tetanus toxin is a zinc protein and its inhibition of neurotransmitter release and protease activity depend on zinc
 
W 10/26 Targeting Malaria Virulence and Remodeling Proteins to the Erythrocyte
 
W 11/2 Hijacking of host cell IKK signalosomes by the transforming parasite Theileria  
W 11/9 In Vitro Generation of Infectious Scrapie Prions
Brief prion review
    Evading the Immune System & Drug Resistance  
W
11/16 A pol I transcriptional body associatedwith VSG mono-allelic expression inTrypanosoma brucei
 
W
11/23 Thanksgiving break
W
11/30 Anthrax Lethal Toxin-Mediated Killing of Human and Murine Dendritic Cells Impairs the Adaptive Immune Response  
W 12/7 Dictyostelium discoideum Expresses a Malaria Chloroquine
Resistance Mechanism upon Transfection with Mutant, but Not
Wild-type, Plasmodium falciparum Transporter PfCRT