Christopher Sassetti, PhD, Associate Professor at University of Massachusetts, visited April 12-14, 2016 to engage in discussions with Vanderbilt ID Faculty, including Dr. Tim Sterling and his host, Dr. Wonder Drake.
Dr. Sassetti presented at ID Grand Rounds on "The Genetic Dissection of Tuberculosis Pathogenesis".
The Sassetti Lab has developed a variety of new methodologies, which take advantage of both classical genetic tools and genome sequence information. Using these methods, they have identified hundreds of mycobacterial genes that are specifically required for the bacterium to survive under a variety of conditions including acute and chronic infection models. Current work is focused on the characterizing the functional roles played by these virulence systems.