Bacterial behavior and Signaling mechanisms

Dr. Rasika Harshey

TTh 2 - 3.30 PM, RLM 6.120

Office Hours:

By appointment at NMS 2.118

Phone Number:

471-6881

Email:

rasika@uts.cc.utexas.edu

  Syllabus                 Groups

You are responsible for printing online articles. I suggest you either download the PDFs on your laptops or e-mail them to yourself while on campus, since you may not be able to access many of the links from elsewhere.

Jan 18           Introduction

Jan 20           Overview of chemotaxis 

Jan 25           Discovery of chemoreceptors

Jan 27           Discovery of flagellar rotation     Group 1

Feb 1            Gradient sensing and chemotaxis      Group 2 

Feb 3             Transmembrane signaling in a chemoreceptor    Group 3

Feb 8             Signaling through a dimer      Group 4   

Feb 10           Cytoplasmic signaling pathway: CheA  Group 5

Feb 15           Regulation by phosphorylation: CheB     Group 6

Feb 17          Regulation by phosphorylation: CheY    Group 7

Feb 22          Review 

Feb 24           Test 1   

Mar 1           Chemoreceptor clustering                   

Mar 3            No class: watch NOVA "Judgement Day-Intelligent Design on Trial" + see reading assignment                                    

Mar 8            Trimer-of-dimers          

Mar 10          Clustering & Adaptation 

SPRING BREAK

Mar 22         Morphogenetic signals: Flagella assembly

Mar 24                                             : Length control     

Mar 29         Surface (?) signals : Swarming in Vibrio/Salmonella                                          

Mar 31                                         : Retractile motility in Pseudomonas /Myxococcus   

Apr 5             Review 

Apr 7             Test 2   

Apr 12           Cell density signals :Quorum sensing  (Social Cheating)

Apr 14            No class: Watch BBC "Nice Guys Finish First" (1987) + see reading assignment                               

Apr 19                                        :Quorum sensing (sRNA)                     

Apr 21                                       :Quorum sensing (Biofilms)

Apr 26                                       :Paracrine signaling (Biofilms)

Apr 28          c-di-GMP signals : Caulobacter development (Ejecting flagella)                               

May 3                                        : E. coli/Salmonella chemotaxis (Braking the motor)

May 5            Test 3   Key

   Reading

•   Final Grade