报告题目：  Biology and Genomics of Shiga-toxin Producing Escherichia coli.
      报告人：      Michelle Qiu Carter, Ph.D
      报告时间：  2013年6月13日上午9:00
      报告地点：  农业与生物学院0-103会议室
      邀请人：      史贤明 教授

      Speaker’s Biography
      Dr. Carter (Qiu) obtained a B.S. degree in Biology from Fudan University in 1993. Then she joined the lab of Professors Xue, Jinglun and Qiu, Xinfang at the Institute of Genetics at Fudan University, studying the role of intron in the expression of Human Clotting Factor IX in vivo. In 1996, she came to the United States and worked as a research assistant at the Oak Ridge national laboratory, where she met her Ph.D mentor, Dr. James Tiedje, a renowned microbial ecologist at Michigan State University. In 1999, Michelle moved to East Lasing, Michigan, starting her research work on Shewanella oneidensis strain MR-1, a potential strain for bioremediation. Michelle applied transcriptome and physiology based approaches and characterized the resistance of S. oneidensis to various radiation stresses. Her research led to 5 publications in several high impact journals. After graduating from Michigan State University, she joined Dr. Stephen Lory’s lab at Harvard Medical School, studying the genome and virulence evolution of opportunistic human pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Using cutting-edge molecular biology techniques, Michelle discovered that the large pathogenicity island in Pseudomonas aeruginosa can transfer to a new host strain by a conjugation mechanism. Her finding is the first report on mobilization of a pathogenicity island in P. aeruginosa and revealed a mechanism of virulence acquisition in bacterial pathogen, and this work was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA. Michelle had been longing for an opportunity of incorporate basic research into an applied field. In 2009, when she learned of the opening of a Microbiologist Research Position at the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), Agricultural Research Service (ARS), in Albany, California, to perform basic and applied research in the genomics and the biology of bacterial foodborne pathogens on produce, she applied. In June of 2009, she moved to California to join USDA-ARS as a permanent research scientist. Ever since then, Michelle’s research has been centered on the Shiga-toxin producing Escherichia coli (STEC) and today, she will talk about her research on biology and genomics of STEC.