Event Date
MIC 291 Work in Progress Seminars
Selected Topics in Microbiology
Guest speaker: Dr. Caitlin Cornell, Ph.D., James S. McDonnell Postdoctoral Fellow, Fletcher Lab Department of Bioengineering, University of California, Berkeley
About the speaker: Caitlin Cornell, Ph.D., is a James S. McDonnell Postdoctoral Fellow in the lab of Prof. Daniel Fletcher in the Department of Bioengineering at UC Berkeley. Caitlin received her Ph.D. in physical chemistry from the University of Washington with Prof. Sarah Keller investigating the central role of lipids in a wide range of biological phenomena; from membrane transitions that influence essential protein functions in yeast, to mechanisms for the formation of the first protocells on Earth. In her postdoctoral fellowship, she explores how membrane biophysical properties at the immune cell-target cell interface drive immune signaling and downstream effector functions. In particular, she is interested in the role of trogocytosis (a process in which one cell ‘nibbles’ another) in immune evasion and in immune cell phenotypic plasticity.
About the seminar: All cells interact with other cells. Whether they coexist in dense tissues or swim through dilute oceans as single- celled organisms, cells must form interfaces to communicate, to eat, and to build multicellular structures. These interfaces are greater than the sum of their parts; emergent properties at the cell-cell interface control the biological outcome of these interactions. In this talk, Dr. Caitlin Cornell will discuss one particular cell-cell interface, between a macrophage and its target, that leads to different cellular behavior depending on the physical properties of the interface. Macrophages, known as ‘professional phagocytes’, are capable of simply nibbling a target cell (a process termed ‘trogocytosis’) rather than fully phagocytosing it. Dr. Cornell will show that this decision is governed not by the macrophage, but by the physical properties of the target cell. Trogocytosis has important consequences in macrophages, and she will demonstrate how nibbled target proteins end up displayed on the macrophage surface, a phenomenon implicated in tissue homeostasis, development, and immune evasion.
Please contact Arthur Charles-Orszag (acharlesorszag@ucdavis.edu) or Amanda Huang (amnhuang@ucdavis.edu) for any questions.