William (Clay) Fuqua, Department of Biology, Indiana University, Bloomington, will present a Distinguished Lecture in Microbiology: "Sticking to your point: deployment and function of a unipolar
polysaccharide adhesin by Agrobacterium tumefaciens"

4:15 p.m. Wednesday, November 28 in 218 Pearson Hall.

Research projects in Fuqua's laboratory focus on cell-to-cell interactions of bacteria, which allow them to communicate with and physically contact one another to coordinate their behavior and form complex multicellular structures.

These interactions often occur when microbes colonize a host. His research group studies mechanisms of microbial cellular interactions in three contexts. The first context is quorum sensing, a form of intercellular signaling, in plant-associated bacteria such as grobacterium tumefaciens. The second context is biofilm formation by surface-adherent microbial communities. The third context is composition and
organization of microbial communities in invertebrate hosts, such as ticks that can transmit diseases to humans.

Fuqua received his Ph.D. in Microbiology from the University of Maryland and pursued postdoctoral research at Cornell University prior to joining Indiana University, where he is affiliated with the Department of Biochemistry, the Center for Genomics and Bioinformatics, and the Indiana Molecular Biology Institute.

In addition to being honored for his research accomplishments, Fuqua has received multiple teaching awards and has served as a Waksman Foundation for Microbiology Lecturer under the auspices of the American Society for Microbiology.