October Colloquia Round-up!

Dr. Doug Bernstein: Department of Biology Research Lecture

SPA Colloquium: October 12, 2018 at 3 pm in Bracken Library 104

Dr. Doug Bernstein is an assistant Professor of Biology at Ball State University.

Many students attended to support Dr. Bernstein.

Bernstein's lecture focused on his research with "Genome editing and RNA modification in the human fungal pathogen Candida Albicans." 

The research Dr. Bernstein  is currently working on in his lab is extremely important. This is because while Candida Albicans is an common pathogenic yeast that is a found within the bacteria of human intestines, its infections can be deadly.

These infections are the most prevalent fungal infection in humans. They are typically just annoying but not deadly in healthy people. But, they are becoming a serious health problem for those with compromised immune systems.

CRISPR

Dr. Bernstein

According to Dr. Bernstein a number of aspects of Candida Albicans biology make it challenging to study, but one way they're getting around the challenges is by using the genome editing technique CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats).

They are using CRISPR, to change the guide sequence so they can target different genes, and see how the cells react.

The goal of the lab is essentially to use genome editing on Candida Albicans to further research on how to cure these often antibiotic resistant infections.

Within Dr. Bernstein's lab they are currently conducting research using the "Galleria mellonella" model, which is testing on moth larvae.

They do this for the following reasons:

1. They are cheap to get and keep
2. Easy to manipulate
3. Less regulations than many other symptoms
4. Similar innate immune system as mammals
5. Results are relatively straight forward to interpret 

Results

So far Dr. Bernstein and his researchers have:

• Identified restriction enzymes whose recognition sites encode for biologically important point mutations.
• Introduced points mutants into UME6 a key driver of filamentation in Candida Albicans and were able to quickly screen for correct transformants.
• Found that aUme6 Zn2+ binding domain is important for filamentation and deletion of this domain leads to lower virulence. 

In addition to their research on Candida Albicans, there are many other projects underway in the lab. Contact Dr. Bernstein at dabernstein@bsu.edu to learn more about their latest research.