Department Seminars — Spring 2013

Date

Title & Speaker

Speaker Photo

1/18

Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill: A Systems Biology Approach to an Ecological Disaster

Dr. Terry Hazen, UT/ORNL Governor's Chair Professor, The Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Department of Microbiology, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, and Center for Environmental Biotechnology.

The University of Tennessee

Title: TBD

Dr. Jerry Hilbish, Professor, Department of Biological Sciences. USC

"Why Evolution is True"

Dr. Jerry A. Coyne, Professor, Department of Ecology and Evolution at University of Chicago. Dr. Coyne’s work is focused on understanding the origin of species: the evolutionary process that produces discrete groups in nature.  He is a past President of the Society for the Study of Evolution and a member of the Committee on Genetics and the Committee on Evolutionary and has published more than 100 scientific papers on evolution and two books, “Speciation” and “Why Evolution is True.”

*Seminar is located in Tillman Hall at 7:30pm.

Host: Dr. Ptacek

"Of Lice and Men: Investigating Human Evolution from a Lousy Perspective."  Dr. Reed’s lab studies a broad array of evolutionary questions usually relating to mammals, and sometimes their parasites. They apply techniques from phylogenetics, population genetics, coalescent simulations/modeling, and ecological niche modeling to study mammals, their ectoparasites, and even bacteria that live within the parasites. In more recent work they have tried to address the question "to what extent can you infer the evolutionary history of the host (mammal) simply by uncovering the evolutionary history of the parasite (lice)?" 

Dr. David Reed, Associate Curator of Mammals and  Chair, Department of Natural History, Florida Museum of Natural History

University of Florida

Host: Dr. Ptacek

"The Ecology and Physiology of Sexual Conflict and Reproductive Investment."

Dr. Bob Cox, UGA

2/22

Utilizing piggyBac and JetPEI to Create Transgenic Chickens

Dr. Brian Jordan, Assistant Research Scientist, Poultry Diagnostic and Research Center, UGA

Host: Dr. Chapman

Title: TBD

Dr. Matthew Turnbull, Associate professor, School of Agricultural, Forest & Environmental Sciences

Host: TBD

Dr. Allison Welch, Assistant Professor, Department of Biology, College of Charleston.

Title: TBD

Host: Dr. Moran

No Seminar, Spring Break

Title: TBD

Reserved for new faculty candidate

Title: TBD

Reserved for new faculty candidate

Host: TBD

4/12

Title: "Altruism Writ Small: Why E. coli cells protect one another from antibiotics"

My colleagues and I (along with an army of students) have been studying microbial altruism in E. coli. Altruism in this system involves a cell secreting a substance called beta lactamase, which breaks down antibiotics, and protects not just the cell secreting this substance, but all cells in the general vicinity. We've done experiments that show that producing beta lactamase is expensive and cells that don't pay these costs-- cheaters cells --grow more quickly than cells that do (when no antibiotics are around). And yet, these secreting altruists coexist side by side with their cheating fellow cells.  I'll talk about experiments that help us understand why, briefly touch on some computer simulations that model the E. coli altruism system, and then discuss work we have done that extends microbial altruism and cheating to interspecific interactions between E. coli and Salmonella cells.

Dr. Lee Dugatkin,

Host: Dr. Sears

Title: TBD

Reserved for new faculty candidate

4/26

Reserved for BSGSA Speaker

Title: TBD

Host: TBD