Topic：Cellular and Tissular Cryo-Electron Tomography Study of Host-Pathogen Interaction

Speaker：Prof. Meijing Li

Host：Prof. Zhongmin Liu

Time：October 17th, 16:30-18:00pm

Venue：The Learning Studio

Abstract:

Infectious diseases threaten human health at all times. Understanding host-pathogen interaction is necessary and urgently needed to unravel disease pathogenesis. The macromolecule complexes at the interface are well characterized. Cryo-electron tomography (cryo-ET) is a method of choice to dissect macromolecules at near-atomic/nanometer resolution in an unperturbed native environment. Current cryo-ET, integrating cryo-CLEM and cryo-FIB milling, still needs to address small-size samples in cultured cells or tissue. We will talk about our cryo-ET ultrastructural insights into the rare events in host cells and tissues upon bacterial infection.

Brief introduction of the speaker:

Meijing Li is a Principal Investigator at Shenzhen Medical Academy of Research and Translation (SMART). Her research mainly focuses on the cryo-ET study of macromolecular complexes at the host-pathogen interface. She obtained her Ph.D. at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, in 2019, working on single particle cryo-EM and cryo-ET. She then started her postdoctoral training at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried, Germany. During her postdoc fellowship, she worked in the world-leading lab of Wolfgang Baumeister, studying xenophagy induced by Salmonellae with cryo-ET and developing advanced cryo-ET for plant tissue study. In 2023, she built her own lab as a PI at SMART, continuing to work on host-pathogen interaction.