The 2021 Pioneer Valley Microbiology Symposium
To occur virtually over Zoom on Friday, January 29th, 2021.
Link will be provided in the abstract book.
9:30 – 9:35 am Opening Remarks: James F. Holden, Professor; and Department Chair of Microbiology, University of Massachusetts Amherst
9:35 – 10:45 am Session 1: Medical Microbiology
9:35 – 10:05 am Alveolar macrophages: Pulmonary immune sentinels for Mycobacterium tuberculosis (invited keynote speaker). Alissa Rothchild, Dept. of Veterinary and Animal Science, University of Massachusetts
10:05 – 10:25 am Characterizing a hypochlorous acid-sensing transcriptional regulator in uropathogenic Escherichia coli. Sadia Sultana, School of Biological Sciences, Illinois State University
10:25 – 10:45 am The SHAPE of U: Mapping out protective elements in mRNA escapees. Jacob Miles, Dept. of Microbiology, University of Massachusetts Amherst
10:45 – 11:00 am Break
11:00 – 12:10 pm Session 2: Environmental Microbiology
11:00 – 11:30 am Using population structure and host-symbiont specificity to inform knowledge of transmission dynamics in two obligate marine microbial symbioses (invited keynote speaker). Roxanne Beinart, Graduate School of Oceanography, University of Rhode Island
11:30 – 11:50 am Protist facilitated transport as a developing technology for distributing beneficial bacteria in the rhizosphere. Jamie L. Micciulla, Dept. of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of Connecticut
11:50 – 12:10 pm Habitat specific foraminifera diversity identified with newly designed primers for amplicon analyses. Rabindra Thakur, Dept. of Biological Sciences, Smith College
12:10 – 1:00 pm Lunch
1:00 – 1:45 pm Poster Session 1 (Posters # 1 – 22) in GatherTown (link in abstract book)
1:45 – 2:30 pm Poster Session 2 (Posters # 23- 42) in GatherTown (link in abstract book)
2:30 – 3:40 pm Session 3: Microbial Physiology
2:30 – 3:00 pm Regulation of bacterial pumps by small membrane proteins (invited keynote speaker). Mona Wu Orr, Dept. of Biology, Amherst College
3:00 – 3:20 pm Elucidating the upstream regulation of a significant virulence factor in Vibrio cholerae infection of arthropods. Samantha Liu, Amherst College
3:20 – 3:40 pm Conserved actin machinery drives microtubule-independent motility and phagocytosis in the evolutionarily divergent amoeba Naegleria. Katrina Velle, Dept. of Biology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
3:40 – 3:55 pm Break
3:55 – 4:50 pm Session 4: Food Microbiology
3:55 – 4:25 pm Applied and environmental methods for the study, detection, and control of human noroviruses (invited keynote speaker). Matthew Moore, Dept. of Food Science, University of Massachusetts Amherst
4:25 – 4:45 pm Population genomic analysis of Listeria monocytogenes from food reveals substrate-specific genome variation. Tyler D. Bechtel, Dept. of Food Science, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
4:45 – 5:05 pm Bacterial delivery of protein to the nucleus of cancerous cells. Shoshana Bloom, Dept. of Chemical Engineering, University of Massachusetts Amherst
5:05 – 5:30 pm Closing Remarks and Prizes