Master's Thesis Defense - Temitope Coker

Microbial Biology Graduate Program

Master's Thesis Defense

Temitope Coker

"Regulation and Characterization of Chlamydial Development"

Committee Members: Dr. Huizhou Fan, Dr. Gerben Zylstra, Dr. Nancy Walworth, Dr. Zachery Lonergan

Format: Online

Zoom Details for Dissertation Defense

Please email Lindsay Vasy for information (lindsay.vasy@rutgers.edu).

Summary

Chlamydia is a gram-negative obligate intracellular pathogen with a unique biphasic life cycle. Chlamydia trachomatis causes genital and ocular infections in millions of people worldwide each year. It is one of the most prevalent sexually transmitted infections, and infections are often asymptomatic. However, if left untreated, C. trachomatis causes infertility in female patients and often ascends through the genital tract into the body, eventually causing ocular and upper respiratory tract infections. A typical chlamydia development in a host cell involves the differentiation of the infectious elementary bodies (EBs) into the metabolically active replicative form (RBs), followed by the exponential expansion of these RBs, and finally the conversion of RBs back into EBs. These different life forms play important roles in the successful propagation of the species, with EBs needed to infect host cells and RBs for replication of the chlamydial genome. My work in this report looks at how chlamydia fitness is affected by nucleoid organization. I also investigate the life cycle of mouse chlamydia strains used in clinical studies and vaccine research through genome replication kinetics and IFU assays.