Chemical, Materials & Biomolecular Engineering Department

Invites you to a seminar by:

Dr. Angela Brown

Postdoctoral Fellow School of Dental Medicine University of Pennsylvania

Lipid Phase Changes in Microbial Pathogenesis

Pathogenic bacteria produce a number of virulence factors, which enable to these organisms to survive within the host. These factors play a vital role in the pathogenesis of bacterial diseases and therefore represent potential therapeutic targets. This talk will focus on one particular virulence factor, a leukotoxin (LtxA) produced by the bacterium, Aggregatibacter actinomycetemcomitans. This protein toxin selectively kills human white blood cells, thereby destroying the host immune response and allowing the bacterium to thrive within infected individuals. The initial interaction of LtxA with the white blood cells occurs at the plasma membrane of the cells, where the toxin induces several structural changes in the membrane and phase changes in the lipids comprising the membrane before penetrating the membrane to enter the cytosol of the cell where it enacts its toxic effects. Several of these mechanisms appear to be shared by related bacterial toxins. These LtxA-induced changes and the mechanisms used by the toxin to enact them will be described, and a working model of LtxA binding to and penetration of the host cell membrane will be proposed.

Monday, December 10, 2012 United Technologies Engineering Building, Room 150 2:30 p.m. Refreshments will be served at 2:15 p.m.

Bio

Angela Brown is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, School of Dental Medicine, under the guidance of Drs. Edward Lally and Kathleen Boesze-Battaglia. At the University of Pennsylvania, she applies her background in lipid phase behavior in an interdisciplinary study of a protein toxin produced by an oral bacterium. This work has been funded by an NIH NRSA postdoctoral fellowship and a Pathway to Independence grant and received first place in a national postdoctoral competition sponsored by Johnson & Johnson Healthcare Products. After receiving a bachelors degree in Chemical Engineering from Penn State University in 2000, Angela worked in industry for three years. She returned to academia to earn a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Drexel University in 2008, where she studied lipid phase behavior in the Biological Colloids Laboratory with Dr. Steven Wrenn. Her work at Drexel was recognized with the Drexel University College of Engineering Graduate Research Award.