PreMiEr Spring 2024 Seminar Series – Dr. Nathan Crook

Please join the NSF Engineering Research Center for Precision Microbiome Engineering (PreMiEr) for a seminar by Dr. Nathan Crook of North Carolina State University.

Accelerated Engineering of Nonmodel Microbes

Microbial communities are present in a diverse range of important habitats, including the built environment, the human gut, and the plant root.  In these environments, microbial communities utilize available nutrients and produce molecules that have important impacts on their surroundings. Unfortunately, many of the mechanisms that underlie these important behaviors remain mysterious, which limits our ability to modify these communities when something goes wrong, or to enhance the performance of the environment they inhabit.  Genetic modification, such as knockout, knock-down, or overexpression greatly facilitates the elucidation of these mechanisms, but this ability is absent in the majority of bacteria living in important microbial communities.   In this talk, I will discuss the Crook Lab’s recent efforts to enable genetic engineering in nonmodel bacteria.  I will first describe a cell-free approach to “disguise” incoming foreign DNA and its application to intractable gut commensals.  Then, I will discuss the development of a genetic toolkit for engineering the maize root microbiome.  Finally, I will introduce our new efforts to engineer and study built-environment-derived Enterobacter ludwigii.

Open to the public, but registration required for non-PreMiEr members.

Non-PreMiEr members can register for the seminar series through this link.