Casey Latario Awarded NIH Predoctoral Fellowship

Casey Latario was awarded a competitive Ruth L. Kirschstein Predoctoral National Research Service Award (F31) from the NIH National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The NIH F31 Awards support the graduate research of students with a demonstrated potential to develop as productive and independent researchers.

Casey is a 5^th year MCB student in Ben Ross's lab in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Dartmouth's Geisel School of Medicine. The Ross Lab studies how bacteria interact with each other to determine the composition of an individual's gut microbiota. The gut microbiota are the resident bacteria of the gastrointestinal tract and have been found to play important roles in various aspects of human health. One genus of bacteria common in the gut is Bacteroides. These bacteria carry a weapon they can use against neighboring bacterial cells, a toxin-delivery system known as the Type VI Secretion System (T6SS).

Casey uses microbiology, genetics, and biochemistry tools to study the interactions between the subcomplexes in the T6SS, particularly the membrane complex and baseplate. The baseplate is evolutionarily conserved across bacteria, but the membrane complexes contain different proteins in gut bacteria, including the Bacteroides. Casey's funded work aims to uncover how one component can remain the same while the other differs between bacteria, what functional changes that makes, and what the interfaces between the two subcomplexes look like to allow for different binding partners.

When not in the lab, Casey enjoys painting (he also supplies his own illustrations for his scientific talks!), reading, board games, running, skiing, and generally taking full advantage of the outdoors around the Upper Valley.