A “Loss to Win” Strategy for Bacterial Pathogen

No. 186 Aegon-Industrial Global Health Seminar Series

Abstract

Understanding changes in pathogen behavior (e.g. increased virulence, a shift in transmission channel) constitutes a significant barrier to the public health management of emerging infectious diseases. Genome degradation via gene depletion or inactivation is recognized as a pathoadaptive feature of the pathogen evolving with the host. However, little is known about the exact role of genome degradation in affecting pathogenic behavior, and the underlying molecular detail has yet to be examined. In this talk, we presented a previously unseen paradigm for remodeling bacterial surface appendages that supplements virulence-enhanced evolution with increased vertical transmission.

Speaker

Min Yue, PhD, BVM
Professor, Doctoral supervisor, College of Animal Sciences, Zhejiang University

Dr. Min Yue received his bachelor of veterinary medicine degree in 2005 from Huazhong Agricultural University and continued his Ph.D. in studying bacterual genomics and pathogenesis. After completing the training in 2010, he joined Prof. Dieter Schifferli’s lab at the University of Pennsylvania as a postdoc and then as a research associate in 2014 with his main area of research being Salmonella and Yersinia pestis. In early 2017, he returned to his own country and established himself as a professor of microbiology (principal investigator) at the Zhejiang University, Hangzhou. His current interest lies in applying the integrative “Omics” approach to understand the functional diversity of bacterial virulence factors and mechanisms, particularly the impact of ONE health genomics on food safety. He is also interested in adopting the above knowledge in creating and developing predictive, preventive, or therapeutic measures.

He served on the editorial board for Front Microbiol (Associate Editor), Front Vet Med (Associate Editor), mSystems, Animal Dis, Microorganisms, Foodborne Pathog Dis and ad hoc reviewers for ~100 additional journals in the field (>500 times), including BMJ, Cell Rep, Food Microbiol, Microbial Genom etc. As a corresponding author, he has published over 80 peer-reviewed papers in high-impact journals, including Nat Sci Rev, Nat Commun, EMBO Mol Med, Clin Infent Dis, mBio. The work is well cited with a total citation of ~3000, and an h-index of 30. He also received numerous awards and was frequently invited to lecture at national and international meetings. Recently, he was chosen as an expert at the Joint FAO/WHO committee (2023.1-2027.12) on Microbiological Risk Assessment.