Bioengineering Seminar Series: Mark Shirtliff

Friday, February 5, 2016
9:00 a.m.-10:00 a.m.
Pepco Room (1105), Jeong H. Kim Engineering Building
Dr. William Bentley
bentley@umd.edu

Dr. Mark Shirtliff
Associate Professor
Department of Microbial Pathogenesis
University of Maryland School of Dentistry

Bioengineering approaches to diagnose and prevent biofilm infections

A biofilm may be defined as a sessile community of microbes attached to a substratum, interface, or each other and embedded within a matrix of extracellular polymeric substance. These biofilm microbes have an altered phenotype with respect to growth, gene expression, and protein production compared to their free-floating planktonic counterparts. Most importantly, biofilm growth enables resistance to removal strategies, most notably antimicrobial agents (e.g. antibiotics) and the host immune response.

Until recently, bacterial research has almost exclusively relied upon planktonic shaken cultures even though biofilms are the dominant mode of growth in the microbial world and in cases of human infections. This reliance upon planktonic studies has hindered badly needed advances in the war against microbial disease.

This seminar will introduce the concepts of biofilms and the infections they cause. We will also describe how bioengineering can use this mode of growth combined with the latest omics tools (RNAseq, Shotgun LC-MS/MS, and Immunoproteomics) in microbial research to design novel diagnostics and prevention strategies against microbial infections. We will use studies of the superbug, methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) as an example of how biofilm research can be used to develop new medical translational products. 

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