From Genes to Mechanisms: Deciphering bacterial genomes at scale.

Seminar Details

Host: Dr. Josh Wand

Time: 4:00pm-5:00pm

Location: BICH 108

Seminar Abstract

Bacteria are the most prevalent organisms in almost every ecosystem, driving positive and
negative outcomes across scales – from the human health and disease to ecosystems and
planetary health. Despite their importance, our mechanistic understanding of non–model
bacteria lags. For example, ~1/4 of the essential genes of the notorious human pathogen
Mycobacterium tuberculosis are still uncharacterized. I describe our recent method
enabling AI–based prediction of protein–protein interactions at genome scale, and our high–
throughput CRISPRi based functional genomics screen of mycobacterial genes and then
show how combining these technologies enables rapid progress. Leveraging continuing
advances in AI–based structure prediction, this generalizable framework can be applied to
diverse bacterial species to rapidly gain mechanistic insights into core processes and
reshape our understanding of how bacteria thrive in the biosphere.