This promises to be an interesting talk!
Synthetic biologist Sean Leonard, research scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory will present "Engineering Honey Bee Gut Bacteria to Activate Immunity and Limit Pathogens" at his seminar hosted by the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology on Wednesday, April 22 in 122 Briggs Hall.
Leonard will speak at 12:10. His seminar also will be on Zoom. The Zoom link: https://ucdavis.zoom.us/j/95882849672.
"Honey bees are essential pollinators threatened by colony losses linked to the spread of parasites and pathogens," Leonard says in his abstract. "In this talk I will discuss how we developed a microbial synthetic biology approach for manipulating bee gene expression and protecting bee health. We engineered a symbiotic bee gut bacterium, Snodgrassella alvi, to induce eukaryotic RNA interference (RNAi) immune responses. We show that engineered S. alvi can stably recolonize bees and produce double-stranded RNA to activate RNAi and repress host gene expression, thereby altering bee physiology, behavior, and growth. We used this approach to improve bee survival after a viral challenge, and we show that engineered S. alvi can kill parasitic Varroa mites by triggering the mite RNAi response. This symbiont-mediated RNAi approach may be a tool for studying bee functional genomics and potentially for safeguarding bee health. I will discuss recent developments extending this work and other work in bee microbiome engineering, and considerations for extended symbiont-mediated RNAi more broadly."
Educated in Texas, Served in Afghanistan
Leonard received his master of science degree in biotechnology from the University of Texas, San Antonio in 2013, and his doctorate in synthetic biology from the University of Texas, Austin, in 2020. He served as an assistant operations manager and battle captain in the Army National Guard from September 2012 to June 2013 in Kabul, Afghanistan. Among his duties: he led a team responsible for coordinating and tracking the operations of more than 500 personnel across seven U.S. bases in Kabul.
Leonard joined the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in September, 2021 as a postdoctoral researcher and became a full-time research scientist in December 2024.
For technical issues involving Zoom, contact seminar coordinator Marshall McMunn at msmcmunn@ucdavis.edu.