Please join us Tuesday, January 17, in-person, 3:30pm, BPB 131 for an MCB Faculty Search Seminar
Our speaker will be Dr. Joshua Chappie, Assistant Professor / Department of Molecular Medicine / Cornell University
Leveraging structural biology to improve therapeutic approaches for bacterial and viral infections
Summary: Dr. Chappie will describe his efforts to dissect host-pathogen interactions using structural, biochemical, and cellular techniques and will highlight our recent mechanistic advances characterizing bacterial defense systems that confer immunity against bacteriophage viruses and the assembly, uptake, and transmission of plant viruses by insect vectors. Chappie will also discuss the translational aspects and implications of our work with respect to treating antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections and mitigating crop loss in agricultural settings.
Bio: As an undergraduate, Dr. Chappie studied the electrostatic tuning of ionic conductance in bacterial potassium channels using single channel recording techniques with Dr. Christopher Miller at Brandeis University.
As a graduate student in the laboratories of Dr. Sandra Schmid and Dr. Ronald Milligan at the Scripps Research Institute, Chappie utilized biochemistry, cryo-electron microscopy, cell biology, and protein engineering to examine the assembly, catalytic mechanisms, and regulation of the endocytic GTPase dynamin and its role in cellular trafficking. He continued these efforts as a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Fred Dyda at NIDDK, where he used X-ray crystallography to elucidate structural changes associated with dynamin GTP hydrolysis. Collectively, these studies fundamentally changed our understanding of dynamin’s GTPase activities and provided new insights into how nucleotide hydrolysis is coupled to membrane scission.
As an independent investigator, Dr. Chappie has established a robust research program studying host-pathogen interactions in different contexts. His experimental questions examine the activity and regulation of bacterial defense systems that confer immunity against bacteriophage viruses and the assembly, uptake, and transmission of plant viruses by insect vectors. Work in his lab has elucidated the structures and catalytic mechanisms governing the GTP-powered McrBC restriction system and ATP-powered OLD family nucleases and identified new inhibitors of polerovirus transmission and novel biopesticides.
Link to publication 1
Link to publication 2
In order to make our speaker feel welcome, please plan to attend In-person. In the case that a livestream is needed, click here: Livestream Link If you must join remotely, you can ask questions via email (rather than chat); please send questions to Jim Cole (james.cole@uconn.edu).
For more information, contact: Ashley Landon at ashley.landon@uconn.edu