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Host-microbiome protein interactions related to disease

Date and Time

ONLINE CBE SEMINAR

All Winter 2021 CBE Seminars will be hosted online via Zoom. RSVP to receive zoom link by emailing info@bioengineering.ucsb.edu.

Zoom will open after the host has joined at the start of each seminar. You can ask questions through the chat forum and by raising your "hand" and the speaker will call on you. 

Speaker

Llana Lauren Brito, Ph.D. 
Assistant Professor, Mong Family Sesquicentennial Faculty Fellow in Biomedical Engineering
Cornell University, Meinig School of Biomedical Engineering
 

Abstract

The Brito Lab at Cornell University aims to tackle the question of how the microbiome influences human health. We are motivated to identify novel therapies, diagnostics and preventative strategies for microbiome- related disorders, including inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), colorectal cancer (CRC), and auto-immune disease. We are specifically interested in the functional dimensions of host-microbe interactions, starting with host- microbiome protein-protein interactions, and extending this to cellular signaling, epithelial barrier function, and impacts on the immune system. We are developing a suite of experimental systems biology tools to probe functions in a robust, high-throughput manner. We also focus on understanding the spread of antibiotic resistance between the human gut microbiota and pathogenic species, using new technologies which we are developing to track mobile genetic elements. In this talk, I will discuss methods we have developed to track the emergence of multi- drug resistant organisms within the gut microbiome and explore the mechanisms by which microbes interact with human tissue.

Bio

Ilana Brito uses systems biology approaches to study the transmission of bacterial and genetic components of the human microbiome. As an undergraduate at Harvard University, she double majored in Biology and Government. Given her long-standing interest in infectious disease, she traveled abroad to perform field and lab research on malaria in Mali. She then earned a Ph.D. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Genetics. She received a postdoctoral fellowship from the Earth Institute at Columbia University where she began studying the transmission of viral pathogens and emerging infectious disease. Ultimately, she shifted her focus to the transmission of the multitude of bacteria inhabiting the human body. To this end, she launched a large field research project in the Fiji Islands. In Eric Alm's lab at MIT, she developed methods to examine signatures of transmission in metagenomic whole genome shotgun sequencing data. She has worked with the Broad Institute and the Cary Institute for Ecosystem Studies. Prof. Brito's lab pioneers systems-level methods to examine the human microbiome and horizontal gene transfer, the predominant mechanism by which pathogens acquire antibiotic resistance. The Brito Lab studies the transmission of commensal microbes between people and their environments and the health impacts of such transmission events. They employ a combination of microbial engineering, single-cell sequencing approaches, and novel computational algorithms applied to metagenomic data to better understand the relationship between human health and the microbiome.