In the spirit of Iowa State’s “Celebration of Advancing Technologies,” the College of Veterinary Medicine will be conducting a series of seminars based on the most recent research conducted at the college.

The seminars will be held today through Thursday at noon in the Memorial Union. They are free and open to the public.

Phyllis Peters, communication specialist for the College of Veterinary Medicine, said the faculty who are putting on the seminar wanted to educate more members of the ISU community about their research.

The first seminar will be held today in the Gold Room of the MU. Michael Apley and James Roth will be presenting an overview on antibiotic resistance and alternatives to antibiotics.

“More and more diseases are becoming immune to the current antibiotics,” Roth said. “We will be discussing new methods on how to treat and prevent diseases.”

Some of the methods include new drugs to stimulate the immune system, transgenic plants that produce vaccines or immune stimulants and antibacterial peptides to attack bacterial membranes.

Wednesday’s seminar will be held in Room 236 of the MU, with Harley Moon presenting on E. coli and food-borne pathogens.

The seminar will focus on providing strategies to control E. coli in swine and cattle.

“Dr. Moon is receiving a major grant from the National Institute of Health to study the pathogen E. coli infection in swine,” Peters said.

Moon will use the research model on swine to present the impact on research in food safety for humans.

The final seminar in the series will be held in the Gold Room on Thursday.

Chris Minion will be discussing microbial genomics and new vaccinations that are being produced.

“When people look at microbial genomics, they should look at it as an efficient tool to help us combat pathogens,” Minion said.

He also will be describing new research going on in the world and the efforts being made to help third world countries combat diseases.