Speaker: Angela Ching-Yee Leung, Ph.D. Candidate (BMS)
Biology
Advisor: Dr. Myeongwoo Lee
Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) is a soil roundworm and a model animal to grow in laboratory for neuroscience and developmental biology studies. Its small size, transparent body, short life cycle, and other advantages enabled scientists to sequence the first animal genome and to map the wiring diagram of all its neurons. Most C. elegans animals are hermaphrodites; very few are males. The hermaphrodites lay their self-fertilized eggs to the environment. They show increased egg laying shortly after they are given food, which is lab-grown Escherichia coli (E. coli) bacteria. Some other species of bacteria are not as beneficial but are pathogens to the worms. For instance, Salmonella enterica (S. enterica) causes cell death, which leads to the death of the worms. However, we found that a cell wall component of Salmonella, lipopolysaccharides (LPS), stimulates egg laying, like E. coli food does. Overall, we are interested in understanding how the LPS stimulates egg laying, a reproductive behavior of the nematode C. elegans.
Tuesday, 30 March 2021, 3:30 – 4:30 pm