Yan-Yeung Luk
Syracuse University, USA
Title: Hydrocarbon-omics of Bacterial Appendages for Controlling Their Pathogenic Activities
Biography
Biography: Yan-Yeung Luk
Abstract
Bacterial appendages, pili protein, have been explored for developing vaccines against infectious diseases, but without an eventual success. Here, we present a chemical approach of controlling the newly discovered signaling events that initiated by ligand binding to pili proteins on bacterial surfaces. We first demonstrate that a specific class of molecules that control a wide range of pathogenic activities of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and the characteristics of disrupting cell signaling of these activities, supporting the notion of a drug development. Second, we demonstrate the specific covalent coupling between a designed ligand molecule and the pili protein as a validation of the receptor protein identity. We will discuss the chemical structural space that validates a hydrocarbon-omic for controlling different species and different strains within a species of microbes.
