Interbacterial interaction within microbial communities

Bacteria colonize every habitat on earth and impact environmental ecosystems in diverse ways from preventing diseases on plant roots to altering nutrient uptake rate in the human gut. The influences are dependent on interactions of multiple bacterial species within the communities. Bacterial interactions, cooperative or competitive, lead to the evolution of a diverse array of pathways. A detailed understanding of the molecular mechanisms of bacterial interactions provides avenues to predict and manipulate microbial populations, which will have applications in both the environment (e.g. bioremediation) and human health (e.g. dysbiosis in the human gut) contexts. However, such knowledge is lacking in most systems. We are interested in studying the underlying mechanisms that allow individual species of bacteria to survive and thrive in multi-species environments.

• Education
• Achievements & Honors
• Selected publications
• Lab members

• PDF, 2017-2021, University of Washington, USA
• Ph.D., 2017, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA
• BS, 2009, National Yang-Ming University, Taiwan

• 2024-2027, NSTC, 2030 Cross-Generation Young Scholars Program – Excellent Young Scholars
• 2023-2027, Academia Sinica Career Development Award

1. Chia-En Tsai, Feng-Qi Wang, Chih-Wen Yang, Ling-Li Yang, Thao VP Nguyen, Yung-Chih Chen, Po-Yin Chen, Ing-Shouh Hwang, and See-Yeun Ting. "Surface-mediated bacteriophage defense incurs fitness tradeoffs for interbacterial antagonism", EMBO J (2025)
2. Po-Yin Chen, Yung-Chih Chen, Po-Pang Chen, Kuan-Ting Lin, Karen Sargsyan, Chao-Ping Hsu, Wei-Le Wang, Kuo-Chiang Hsia & See-Yeun Ting. "A whole-cell platform for discovering synthetic cell adhesion molecules in bacteria", Nature Communications 15, Article number: 6568 (2024)
3. See-Yeun Ting, Kaitlyn D. LaCourse, Hannah E. Ledvina, Rutan Zhang, Matthew C. Radey, Hemantha D. Kulasekara, Rahul Somavanshi, Savannah K. Bertolli, Larry A. Gallagher, Jennifer Kim, Kelsi M. Penewit, Stephen J. Salipante, Libin Xu, S. Brook Peterson, Joseph D. Mougous. "Discovery of coordinately regulated pathways that provide innate protection against interbacterial antagonism", eLife (2022) 11:e74658
4. See-Yeun Ting, Kaitlyn D. LaCourse, Hannah E. Ledvina, Rutan Zhang, Matthew C. Radey, Hemantha D. Kulasekara, Rahul Somavanshi, Savannah K. Bertolli, Larry A. Gallagher, Jennifer Kim, Kelsi M. Penewit, Stephen J. Salipante, Libin Xu, S. Brook Peterson, Joseph D. Mougous. "Coordinately regulated interbacterial antagonism defense pathways constitute a bacterial innate immune system", bioRxiv (2021) 10.1101/2021.08.22.457286
5. *See-Yeun Ting, *Esteban Martínez-García, Shuo Huang, Savannah K Bertolli, Katherine A Kelly, Kevin J Cutler, Elizabeth D Su, Hui Zhi, Qing Tang, Matthew C Radey, Manuela Raffatellu, S Brook Peterson, Víctor de Lorenzo, Joseph D Mougous. "Targeted depletion of bacteria from mixed populations by programmable adhesion with antagonistic competitor cells", Cell Host Microbe 28, 313-321. (2020) (*equal contribution) "In Brief written in Nature Reviews Microbiology."
6. See-Yeun Ting, Dustin E Bosch, Sarah M Mangiameli, Matthew C Radey, Shuo Huang, Young-Jun Park, Katherine A Kelly, Szymon Krzysztof Filip, Young Ah Goo, Jimmy K Eng, Marc Allaire, David Veesler, Paul A Wiggins, S Brook Peterson, Joseph D Mougous. "Bifunctional immunity proteins protect bacteria against FtsZ-targeting ADP-ribosylating toxins", Cell 175, 1380-1392.e14. (2018) "Preview written in Cell."
7. See-Yeun Ting, Nicholas L Yan, Brenda A Schilke, Elizabeth A Craig. "Dual interaction of scaffold protein Tim44 of mitochondrial import motor with channel-forming translocase subunit Tim23", Elife 25, 6:e23609 (2017)
8. *See-Yeun Ting, *Brenda A. Schilke, Masaya Hayashi, and Elizabeth A. Craig. "Architecture of the TIM23 inner mitochondrial translocon and interactions with the matrix import motor", J Biol Chem 10, 289(41):28689-96. (2014) (*equal contribution)