Stanford University

Stanford University's Steve Quake on "Sequencing Single Cell Microbial Genomes with Microfluidic Amplification Tools" at the Metagenomics Informatics Challenges Workshop held at the DOE JGI on October 12-13, 2011.

I-CAMP 2010 Australia CIMOPV Thursday July 1 Alberto Salleo Materials design to improve efficiency of OPV Parnell Building Rm 222, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia 9:45am Thursday July 1, 2010

In the final part, the enzymology of the erythromycin polyketide synthase is discussed.

In the second part, the contributions of genetics and molecular biology on investigations into erythromycin biosynthesis are summarized. The impact of these fields on biosynthetic engineering is also explained.

Many antibiotics, which we have taken foregranted since the 1950's, are now becoming ineffective because bacteria have developed ways of acquiring resistance. The development of new antibiotics is lagging behind the loss of the old ones in this race to combat infectious disease. Simultaneously, there is an increase in infectious diseases around the world due to over population, globalization and urbanization. This results in a lethal combination of emerging diseases and loss of effective...

Helicobacter pylori lives in the human stomach. It causes gastritis, ulcer disease and even gastric cancer. Some H. pylori can inject a protein, CagA, into gastric epithelial cells. CagA interacts with the tight junctions that bind cells together and with signaling molecules affecting motility and proliferation. CagA is associated with ulcer disease and cancer but we don't understand how it works to favor malignancy. Not long ago in history most humans carried H. pylori ; the incidence of...

In the third part, I discuss how the complex shapes of cells are created by the cytoskeleton, and I compare and contrast prokaryotes (which have actin-, tubulin-, and intermediate filament -like proteins) and eukaryotes in this regard. In particular, I speculate that cytoskeletal dynamics were necessary to evolve simple bacterial shapes and cell division, but that additional layers of complexity (namely regulated nucleation and molecular motors) allowed eukaryotes to evolve more complex...

The second part is devoted to understanding how the polymerization of actin can produce, which is a current area of research in our laboratory. Here, I cover theories for how polymerization might be used to produce forces, and our efforts to test these models using optical traps, atomic force microscopes, and nanofabricated devices.

I will consider the design of efficient and profit-maximizing Bayesian incentive-compatible mechanisms for general dynamic environments with private information. In the environment, agents observe a sequence of private signals over a number of periods. In each period, the agents report their private signals and choose public (contractible) and private actions based on the reports. The probability distribution over future signals may depend on both past signals and past decisions. The general...

The microbiota in personalized preventative medicine: how do we get from here to there and what role does metagenomics play? Synopsis—In this session we will (i) identify major questions and hurdles we face in under standing the integration between the human microbiota and human biology (in health and disease) and (ii) determine how these major questions may be addressed and what tools/technologies are required to overcome cur rent obstacles. We will attempt to identify immediate and...