Please see Ithaca College Chemistry web page.
https://www.ithaca.edu/academics/school-humanities-and-sciences/chemist…
This Event is Cancelled
Guest Speaker Colleen T. O'Loughlin ’09 P.h.D
of Bates College, Lewiston, Maine
will be joining us this Tuesday, April 12th at 12:10 pm CNS 333 will present:
"The Role of the Pyrazinone Products of the pzn Gene Cluster on Healthy Skin”.
The skin is the largest organ of the human body however, we know surprisingly little about how it functions as a barrier, changes and develops over time, and is monitored by the immune system. Approximately one million microbes reside on every square centimeter of the skin. Interestingly, some disease states are marked by reduced numbers of particular microbes and topical association of these “missing” species can reverse skin inflammation. One of the ways these inter-kingdom interactions could be occurring is via microbially-derived small molecules. A particular set of molecules we are interested in understanding are the family of pyrazinones synthesized by the pzn gene cluster. This cluster is found in all skin-associated Staphylococcal species, however, of the dozens of non-skin associated Staphylococcal species, none contain this cluster indicating it may play a role in skin colonization. However, previous work demonstrated that these pyrazinones are essential for virulence in S. aureus. Interestingly, these same pyrazinones are synthesized by S. epidermidis, a common skin commensal. We want to understand why a microbe that is part of the healthy skin flora synthesizes molecules that have only ever been shown to drive virulence and infection. We hypothesize there must be some additional role of these pyrazinones on healthy skin that is yet to be determined.
