Gladstone Institutes and QBI present the Infectious Diseases and Human Health Mini-Symposium Series on the latest advancements in phages. This event will feature five distinguished speakers who will share their cutting-edge research and insights. Each talk will be followed by a brief Q&A where attendees can engage directly with the speakers.

Phage-host competition has given rise to diverse antivirus defenses in bacteria, but developing effective phage therapies necessitates a better understanding of how these mechanisms cooperate in wild bacteria and how phages circumvent a multi-layered host defense architecture. Recent discoveries have underscored the importance of exopolysaccharides on the bacterial outer membrane as diverse barriers that principally determine phage tropism and host range. In turn, phages have evolved numerous strategies to evade or compromise the immune function of the bacterial cell surface. This symposium will explore topics in (myco)bacterial membrane biology, phage strategies to thwart barrier defenses on the cell surface and other components of host immunity, and how studying phage biology can help illuminate the biogenesis, structure, and function of bacterial membranes.

Speakers:

Graham Hatfull, PhD, Professor, University of Pittsburgh

Hesper Rego, PhD, Associate Professor, Yale University

Jeremy Rock, PhD, Associate Professor, Rockefeller University

Seth Shipman, PhD, Associate Investigator, Gladstone Institutes; Associate Professor, UCSF

Sukrit Silas, PhD, Assistant Investigator, Gladstone Institutes; Assistant Professor, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, UCSF