# First person – Vincenzo Torraca

## TL;DR

This paper explores how zebrafish can help identify host factors that influence susceptibility to the bacterial pathogen Shigella flexneri.

## Contribution

The study introduces a novel approach using zebrafish to uncover host factors controlling bacterial infection susceptibility.

## Key findings

- Zebrafish were used to identify host factors influencing Shigella flexneri infection.
- The research highlights the potential of zebrafish as a model for studying host-pathogen interactions.

## Abstract

First Person is a series of interviews with the first authors of a selection of papers published in Disease Models & Mechanisms, helping researchers promote themselves alongside their papers. Vincenzo Torraca is first author on ‘
Transcriptional profiling of zebrafish identifies host factors controlling susceptibility to

Shigella flexneri’, published in DMM. Vincenzo conducted the research described in this article while he was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at Imperial College London, UK and an ISSF (Institutional Strategic Support Fund)-Wellcome Fellow at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK, where most of the work was carried out in Prof. Serge Mostowy's lab. He has just started his own group at King's College London, investigating host-pathogen interactions and antimicrobial resistance for globally relevant bacterial pathogens, such as Shigella and E. coli, using zebrafish as an in vivo model.