Dr. Lee Presents Her Research at the STIM GRC Meeting
Yi-Ying Lee presented her research in a poster "Loss of fliL results in Swr+ and temperature-dependent motility in Proteus mirabilis and Escherichia coli" at the 2014 Gordon Research Conference "Sensory Transduction in Microorganisms" held January 12-17, 2014 in Ventura Beach, CA. Here are the details.
 

Belas Lab Undergraduate Interns Present at the 17th Annual URCAD at UMBC
The Belas Lab is proud of Alexis Brown and Julius Patellis, both undergraduate interns, who presented their research results at the 2013 Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement Day (URCAD), held Wednesday, April 24, 2013, at UMBC. Alexis presented her poster "The Universality of Roseobacter Motility Inducer (RMI) within the Roseobacter Clade". Here's Alexis explaining her research to an excited listener. Julius presented his work "Surface-sensing gene expression in Proteus mirabilis". Here he is describing details of his research. Congratulations to both Alexis and Julius for their achievements.
 

BLAST XII Presentations
Yi-Ying and Bob travelled to Tucson, AZ January 20-25, 2013 to participate in BLAST (Bacterial Locomotion and Signal Transduction) XII. Yi-Ying presented her talk "Functions of Proteus mirabilis FliL in swarming and responding to surface viscosity" as the leadoff of the Tuesday evening session, while Bob presented his poster "A novel inducer of Roseobacter motility is also a disruptor of algal symbiosis" describing the lab's recent work on Roseobacter Motility Inducer (RMI). Here are the details.
 

Publication of "Activity of Proteus mirabilis FliL is viscosity dependent and requires extragenic DNA"
Yi-Ying Lee, Julius Patellis, and Bob have published their paper describing new and exciting results on the function of FliL, a ubiquitous and equally mysterious flagellar proatein. Loss of FliL results in cells that cannot swarm (Swr(-)) but do swim (Swm(+)) and produces cells that look like wild-type swarmer cells, termed "pseudoswarmer cells," that are elongated, contain multiple nucleoids, and lack septa. Unlike swarmer cells, pseudoswarmer cells are not hyperflagellated due to reduced expression of flaA (the gene encoding flagellin), despite an increased transcription of both flhD and fliA, two positive regulators of flagellar gene expression. We found that defects in fliL prevent viscosity-dependent sensing of a surface and viscosity-dependent induction of flaA transcription. Studies with fliL cells unexpectedly revealed that the fliL promoter, fliL coding region, and a portion of fliM DNA are needed to complement the Swr(-) phenotype. The data support a dual role for FliL as a critical link in sensing a surface and in the maintenance of flagellar rod integrity. Congratulation to all the authors! Read more here.
 

Publication of "A novel inducer of roseobacter motility is also a disruptor of algal symbiosis"
The Belas Lab recently published their work describing Roseobacter Motility Inducer (RMI), a small roseobacticide molecule that transcriptionally activates motility in Silicibacter sp. TM1040. RMI is also algicidal and kills the algal host, thus ending the symbiosis. For more information, please go here.