Carol Bascom-Slack, Ph.D.
Research Assistant Professor
Medical Education
Tufts University School of Medicine
“Crowd-sourcing Environmental Surveillance of Antimicrobial Resistance Through Undergraduate Course-Based Research“

Emerging resistance to antimicrobials threatens human health globally. Resistant bacteria have been documented in various environments, such as drinking water, food, sewage, and soil, yet surveillance and sampling has largely been from infected patients or limited geographic areas. There is consensus that environmental surveillance is an important first step in forecasting and targeting efforts to prevent spread and transmission of resistant microbes. However, efforts to date have been limited. The Prevalence of Antibiotic Resistance in the Environment (PARE) is a classroom-based research project that engages students around the globe in systematic environmental surveillance with the goal of identifying areas where prevalence is high. The format of PARE, designed as short classroom research modules, lowers common barriers for participation in course-based research, and has proven successful in attracting instructors at a range of instructional contexts and institution types. Longitudinal tracking of instructors suggests that the module nature of PARE leads to sustained and expanded classroom research programs and, despite the short duration, students show significant learning gains.

Bio

Dr. Carol Bascom-Slack received her Ph.D. from Tufts Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences where she studied the dynamics of chromosome segregation to understand the underlying cause of conditions such as Down Syndrome. After post-doctoral work at Harvard Medical School, she taught undergraduates at Yale University for 15 years. While at Yale, she co-taught Yale’s first course-based research experience (CURE) for undergraduates. She later worked closely with Dr. Jo Handelsman to develop and co-teach the first iteration of Tiny Earth, an antibiotic discovery CURE. Most recently, she developed the Prevalence of Antibiotic Resistance in the Environment (PARE) program. PARE engages undergraduates in an authentic classroom research experience to shed light on environmental presence of antimicrobial-resistant (AMR) microbes and educate about stewardship. Thousands of undergraduates and high school students across the U.S. and internationally contribute GPS-tagged AMR prevalence data to a database. Dr. Bascom-Slack’s research program is rooted in the social sciences to understand faculty motivations and barriers to integrating authentic experiences into their classes.

This lecture was recorded and can be viewed on the EPAASM YouTube Channel
click here: Virtual Lecture

Keynote Speaker
Mechanisms of genetic change and the natural history of pathogenesis in Haemophilus influenzae
Joshua Chang Mell, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Microbiology & Immunology
Drexel University College of Medicine

The main goal of the Mell lab is to understand how mechanisms of inheritance affect genetic
variation, and conversely, how genetic variation affects mechanisms of inheritance (i.e., “the
genetics of genetics”). Our primary model system is the human bacterial pathogen Haemophilus
influenzae, an important agent of ear infections (otitis media) in children, as well as lung infections
associated with chronic respiratory conditions. H. influenzae, like many other pathogens, is
naturally competent, able to actively transport environmental DNA through its cell membranes
and incorporate homologous molecules into its chromosomes. This pathway, called “natural
transformation,” is a major mechanism of gene transfer across bacteria and has a profound effect
on genome evolution, including spreading antibiotic resistances and other virulence
determinants. Our current research seeks to answer three major questions using a combination
of microbiology, molecular genetics, and genomics/bioinformatics approaches:

1. What factors control transformation frequency across the genome?
2. Can natural transformation be exploited to map pathogenesis genes?
3. How do bacterial genomes change during the course of chronic infections?

Student Talks (4:00pm to 5:00pm)
4:00-4:20pm: “Toll-Like Receptors Dictate Microglia Responses to Beta-Coronaviruses”
Elijah Davis, PhD Candidate in the Navas-Martin lab, Drexel University College of Medicine
4:20-4:40pm: “The role of bacterial amyloid curli in Salmonella-induced Reactive Arthritis”
Kaitlyn Grando, PhD Candidate in the Tükel lab, Temple University Lewis Katz School of Medicine
4:40-5:00pm: “The role of the Kingella kingae lipopolysaccharide in galactan surface anchoring”
Nina Montoya, PhD Candidate in the St. Geme lab, University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine

5:15 – 6:15pm Keynote Speaker

This lecture was recorded and can be viewed on the EPAASM YouTube channel, click here: View Lecture

Bobbi S. Pritt, MD
Chair, Division of Clinical Microbiology, Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology
Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN
“What’s Bugging You? Ticks, Teamwork, and Emerging Pathogens“
Tick-borne diseases are an important cause of morbidity and mortality in the United States. While well-known tick-borne diseases have significantly increased in number over the past decade, and have expanded into new geographical regions, we have also seen the discovery of new bacterial, viral and parasitic tick-borne pathogens that cause human disease. There is a significant need for education on which diseases are circulating in different regions in the United States and how they can be diagnosed in the laboratory. Dr. Bobbi Pritt will discuss her work in new tick-borne pathogen discovery including the identification and characterization of Borrelia mayonii, the second known cause of Lyme disease in the United States.

Dr Pritt’s lecture is now available on the EPAASM YouTube channel

Upcoming Meetings:

795th May 23rd, 2022: Student speakers at 4-5pm, Invited Speaker 5-6pm (Student Comm)

796th June 13th, 2022 Norman Willett Memorial Lecture: Invited Speaker 5-6pm (Education Comm)

Russell Vance, Ph.D.
Professor of Immunology and Molecular Medicine, HHMI Investigator
University of California, Berkeley

“Shigella pathogenesis: in vivo veritas”

Bacteria of the genus Shigella cause shigellosis, a severe gastrointestinal disease that is a major cause of diarrhea-associated mortality in humans. Mice are highly resistant to Shigella and the lack of a tractable physiological (oral infection) model of shigellosis has impeded our understanding of this important human disease. We discovered that resistance of mice to shigellosis is at least in part due to activation of the NAIP-NLRC4 inflammasome in intestinal epithelial cells. Mice lacking inflammasome responses are susceptible to Shigella flexneri and exhibit the major hallmarks of human shigellosis, including inflammatory diarrhea and bloody stools. We are now using this new mouse model to further delineate the host factors involved in Shigella pathogenesis. In this talk, I will describe the model, including some recent unpublished data.

5 – 6 pm, virtual meeting

The Vance Laboratory
We study the interactions between pathogens and the innate immune system.

Infection is a constant threat to all living things. Most of us are oblivious of this threat because our immune system does a remarkable job of eliminating infectious microbes before they cause symptoms. We are interested in understanding how the immune system detects the presence of infectious microbes. We use all the tools of modern molecular biology, biochemistry, and genetics to dissect the fundamental mechanisms that provide host defense. We are also interested in understanding the mechanisms by which pathogens evade host immunity and cause disease.

Zoom information will be emailed to branch members. Non- members can live stream the lecture on our branch YouTube page. (Note: video recording of this lecture will not be available)
Upcoming meetings:

794th April 25th, 2022: Bobbi S. Pritt, MD, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN

795th May 23rd, 2022: Student speakers at 4-5pm, Invited Speaker 5-6pm (Student Comm)

796th June 13th, 2022 Norman Willett Memorial Lecture: Invited Speaker 5-6pm (Education Comm)