Fall 2025 | Chemistry Seminar Series
"Chemical Regulation of Cooperative Behaviors in Microbes: From Multicellularity to Antiviral Immunity"
Dr. J. P. Gerdt
Assistant Professor, Department of Chemistry ~ Indiana University ~ Bloomington
Thursday, October 2nd, 3:30pm in FB-253
Abstract: Chemical regulation of biological processes is ancient and ubiquitous across the domains of life. For example, cells frequently coordinate cooperative behaviors with chemical signals. Chemicals regulate cooperative behaviors not only between cells in multicellular organisms (like us!), but chemicals also regulate cooperative behaviors between cells of ‘unicellular’ organisms like protists and bacteria. Although these organisms are ‘unicellular’ and can survive as single cells, they frequently cooperate with their siblings to eat, mate, and avoid predation and infection. My team aims to uncover the chemical languages that regulate these cooperative behaviors. Upon elucidating the mechanisms of chemical signaling, we can control the cooperative behaviors to reveal mysteries of evolution and ecology and to curtail infectious disease. In this talk, I will discuss two chemically regulated cooperative behaviors. First, we will explore multicellular aggregation in the protists Capsaspora owczarzaki and Ministeria vibrans, which reveal that many genes that were important for the origin of the first animal were initially deployed for aggregation behaviors in ancestral microbes. Then, we will explore how bacteria cooperate to evade viral infections—and how chemical inhibition of this immunity may promote bacteriophage therapies against multidrug resistant pathogens.