MIMS Spotlight Series: Meet Milica Milivojevic

Text written by Nóra Lehotai and Milica Milivojevic. Picture: Milica Milivojevic, owned by Milica Milivojevic.

I had a chat with Milica, who is a postdoctoral fellow in the Sixt group. She is another true cosmopolitan scientist with Serbian-British dual nationality, who then studied in France and did a postdoc fellowship in New York, before arriving at Umeå in March 2021.

Can you tell us about your role at MIMS, what are you working on now? 

As a postdoc in Barbara’s lab, I will be working on Chlamydia trachomatis infection. C. trachomatis is an obligate intracellular pathogen that resides and replicates in a bacteria-containing vacuole called the inclusion. My project will be focused on studying the host-pathogen interaction at the inclusion membrane using proteomics and lipidomic approaches, in order to better understand this intriguing niche.

Read more: MIMS Spotlight Series: Meet Milica Milivojevic

Stress responses in cross-microbial species are disclosed

The Fällman group has published a new article in Nature Communications with the title: “RNA atlas of human bacterial pathogens uncovers stress dynamics linked to infection”. “I think the results obtained from this study could be very helpful for better understanding of adaptation strategies of different bacterial pathogens.”-says Kemal Avican, the main driver of the study, one of the corresponding authors.

Bacterial pathogens have to cope with stressful environments in human host. Their response with the activity of gene products enables them to adapt to those stressful environments and cause troublesome infections. Therefore, genes involved in the adaptation are potential targets for new antimicrobials.
Researchers of this study has exposed 32 different bacterial human pathogens to 11 stress conditions mimicking human host environments and catalogued their transcriptome. Investigation of over 100 000 genes enabled them to identify stress responsive genes, common and unique regulatory responses, and processes participating in different stress responses. By comparing the gene expressions to publicly available data, they could show that these responses are employed during infection of two clinically important pathogens, Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. They have shown that a significant proportion of responses is originated from known and putative novel non-coding RNAs, indicating existence of potential novel ncRNAs in the dataset to be discovered. The RNA atlas is deposited on an interactive and user-friendly webpage at www.pathogenex.org.

Picture: Maria Fällman and Kemal Avican at Umeå University campus. Credit: Gabrielle Beans Picón.

Read more: Stress responses in cross-microbial species are disclosed

MIMS Annual Report 2019-2020 available

The digital version of the MIMS Annual Report 2019-2020 is now available online.

Take a look to learn about the past two years at MIMS:

• How our scientists have studied phages, viruses, bacteria and parasites and how they interact with their hosts and vectors.
• How we have engaged with our international partners in the Nordic EMBL Partnership for Molecular Medicine.
• How we used the EMBL group leader model to bring many new scientists to Sweden.
• How we celebrated the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
• And much more.

Read more to see how you can dowload the MIMS Annual Report 2019-2020.

Read more: MIMS Annual Report 2019-2020 available

Björn Schröder receives Dr P Håkanssons Stiftelse grant

MIMS group leader Björn O. Schröder received a research grant from Dr P Håkanssons Stiftelse (Dr Per Håkansson Foundation) for a project in which he and his team will investigate how specific diets affect the intestinal microbiota. For the project, Björn will collaborate with Anna Sjödin and Jonas Burén from the Department of Food, Nutrition and Culinary Science, Umeå University, to analyze how consumption of a popular low carbohydrate diet affects the gut microbiota in healthy people and what consequences this might have for their interaction with the body. The grant will be awarded during a ceremony on the Näringslivdag in Eslöv in the south of Sweden.

Read more: Björn Schröder receives Dr P Håkanssons Stiftelse grant

MIMS Spotlight Series: Meet Björn Ole Schröder

Text written by Nóra Lehotai and Björn O. Schröder. Pictures owned by Björn O. Schröder.

Björn joined MIMS in 2019 as a group leader. I had a chat with him to get to know how he ended up in Umeå and what does he like to do when he is not at work. Björn was born in Germany and has lived in France, in sunny California and of course, in Sweden and Germany. He shares his adventures with his wife.

Can you tell us about your role at MIMS, what are you working on now?

I am a group leader at MIMS and together with my amazing team we are interested in the interaction between diet, gut microbiota and
the mucosal barrier in the intestine. Specifically, we focus on mucus and antimicrobial peptides, which are two important defense systems of the gut to prevent infections and microbial translocation of the gut bacteria into the body. In the group we use in vivo, ex vivo and in vitro studies to better understand how the mucosal barrier and the microbiota influence each other, since it seems that a specific microbial community is required to keep the defense systems active and functional.

Intestinal defense is impaired in inflammatory bowel diseases and metabolic diseases and appears to depend on the gut microbiota, so we try to identify how the microbiota can be used to strengthen the intestinal barrier to prevent or treat these diseases.

Read more: MIMS Spotlight Series: Meet Björn Ole Schröder