[QSB-grads] Fwd: this friday's physics colloquium on microbiome may be of interest to qsb

[Miriam Barlow]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Ajay Gopinathan <agopinathan at ucmerced.edu>
Date: Thu, Aug 31, 2017 at 1:58 PM
Subject: this friday's physics colloquium on microbiome may be of interest
to qsb
To: Miriam Barlow <mbarlow at ucmerced.edu>


Hi Miriam,
 I thought this might be of interest to QSB faculty and students. If you
could publicize, that would be great
Thanks much
Best
Ajay

Event Start: 09/01/2017, 10:30 AMEvent End: 09/01/2017, 11:50 AMEvent
Location: Classroom and Office Building 1, Room 263

The School of Natural Sciences Physics Colloquium 293:

“Glimpses of Gut Microbes in their Physical World “

By: Raghuveer Parthasarathy

Department of Physics

University of Oregon

Friday, 10:30AM - 11:50 AM, Classroom and Office Building, Room 263



Abstract:

 In each of our digestive tracts, trillions of microbes representing
hundreds of different species colonize local environments, reproduce, and
compete with one another. Little is known about the physical structure and
temporal dynamics of gut microbial communities: how they grow, fluctuate,
and respond to perturbations. To address this and investigate microbial
colonization of the vertebrate gut, my lab applies light sheet fluorescence
microscopy to a model system that combines a realistic in vivo environment
with a high degree of experimental control: larval zebrafish with defined
subsets of commensal bacterial species. Light sheet microscopy enables
three-dimensional imaging with high resolution over the entire intestine,
providing visualizations that would be difficult or impossible to achieve
with other techniques. I will describe this approach and focus especially
on experiments in which a colonizing bacterial species is challenged by the
invasion of a second species, which leads to the decline of the first
group. We find that responses of bacteria to the mechanical contractions of
the gut, and to contact-mediated inter-bacterial killing, can dictate
apparent competition between microbes, suggesting a major role for physical
mechanisms in guiding the composition of the gut micro biota.



Bio:

 Raghuveer Parthasarathy has been a professor at the University of Oregon
since 2006. He received his Ph.D in Physics from the University of Chicago
and was a Miller Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Berkeley before he joined the
University of Oregon. He and his research group construct experiments to
examine a variety of biophysical topics, exploring systems in which the
complex interactions between individual components (biomolecules, cells,
... ) can give rise to, or be described by, simple and robust physical
patterns. His projects fall under two main umbrellas: developmental
biophysics and membrane biophysics. To explore these themes, the group
devotes lots of effort to developing new optical and computational tools.
Professor Parthasarathy's teaching interests mostly involve courses for
non-science majors, including for example a recently developed "biophysics
for non-scientists" class (The Physics of Life). Honors include the Alfred
P. Sloan Fellowship and the NSF Career Award.
______________________________
Ajay Gopinathan
Professor of Physics,
Director, NSF-CREST: Center for Cellular and Bio-molecular Machines
<http://ccbm.ucmerced.edu>,
University of California, Merced,
5200 North Lake Road,
Merced, CA 95343
Ph: 209 228 4048 <(209)%20228-4048>
email: agopinathan at ucmerced.edu
Office: COB 356
web: faculty.ucmerced.edu/agopinathan
group: gopinathanlab.ucmerced.edu
Center: ccbm.ucmerced.edu





-- 
Miriam Barlow
Associate Professor
University of California, Merced

209.228.4174
miriam.barlow at gmail.com
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