College of LAS Events

Chemotaxis is the process where cells move in response to external chemical gradients. For the past twenty years, I have investigated the signal transduction pathway regulating chemotaxis in the bacterium Bacillus subtilis. Much of this work was done in collaboration with George Ordal, an Emeritus Professor of Biochemistry at Illinois. In this talk, I will begin by summarizing Ordal’s contributions to our understanding of B. subtilis chemotaxis. I then discuss our collaborative research investigating the sensing and adaption mechanisms in B. subtilis. I will conclude the talk by discussing our recent work investigating non-canonical ligands and their associated sensing mechanisms.