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Most microorganisms cannot survive in the hostile environment of the stomach. But, what happens when bacteria survives the gastric lumen and are able to call the stomach its home? Dr. Julie Huang tells us the story of H. pylori, eccentric bacteria that are able to colonize human stomach. These bacteria are the leading cause of stomach ulcers in humans and are associated with stomach cancer. Huang discovered TlpB, a chemoreceptor in H. pylori that enables bacteria to detect suitable environments and thereafter “swim” toward their home, the epithelial cells. She showed that TlpB detects the presence of urea, allowing H. pylori to find a more neutral environment where it can survive. This demonstrates that bacteria not only can sense potentially harmful cues, like low pH, but can also react to favorable factors, like urea, when finding their new home. This innovative understanding on how H. pylori find their niche opens new routes to develop novel approaches to prevent stomach ulcers and cancer.

Speaker Biography:
Dr. Julie Huang completed her Bachelor degree at the California Institute of Technology. Given her scientific merits, she was granted a Fulbright scholarship in 2009 to work at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Germany. After this experience, Huang joined the Microbiology and Immunology doctorate program at Stanford University, where she started to work with Dr. Manuel Amieva. At Stanford, she studied how the pathogen H. pylori survive in the stomach. Her outreach interests led her to be involved in different mentoring initiatives, including co-founding the Stanford First Gen/Low-Income (FLI) Undergraduate Mentoring Program.

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