Friday, November 20, at 1PM in 252 BRB II/III.

"Arthropod-borne Diseases in the Lyme Light"

Erol Fikrig, MD, Yale University

Erol is Chief of Infectious Diseases at Yale and is an HHMI Investigator. He has done some very important work on both Lyme disease and West Nile virus. A few of his recent papers are below:

Narasimhan S, Sukumaran B, Bozdogan U, Thomas V, Liang X, DePonte K, Marcantonio N, Koski R, Anderson JF, Kantor F, Fikrig E. Salp25D, a tick peroxiredoxin, facilitates Borrelia burgdorferi acquisition from mice by Ixodes scapularis. Cell Host & Microbe 12:7-18 2007

Pal U, Wang P, Bao F, Yang X, Samanta S, Schoen R, Wormser GP, Schwartz I, Fikrig E. Borrelia burgdorferi basic membrane proteins A and B participate in the genesis of Lyme arthritis. J Exp Med 205:133-41 2008.

Krishnan M, Ng A, Sukumaran B, Gilfoy F, Uchil P, Sultana H, Brass A, Adametz R, Tsui M, Qian F, Montgomery RR, Lev S, Mason P, Koski R, Elledge S, Xavier R, Agaisse H, Fikrig E. RNA interference screen for human genes associated with West Nile virus infection. Nature 455, 425-5, 2008

Town T, Bai F, Wang T, Kaplan AT, Qian F, Montgomery RR, Anderson JF, Flavell RA, Fikrig E. Tlr7 mitigates lethal West Nile encephalitis by affecting interleukin 23-dependent immune cell infiltration and homing. Immunity 30:1-12, 2009