Natasha Weatherspoon-Griffin, an EGH postdoctoral researcher, was awarded a travel grant to attend the Wind River Conference on Prokaryotic Biology in Estes Park, CO in June 2017. A key feature of this historic conference is to maximize participation of early career scientists and facilitate interactions with established investigators. This international meeting brings together researchers who investigate the biology of prokaryotic and lower eukaryotic organisms including the basic and translational properties of bacterial pathogenesis. Natasha presented a poster about her ongoing work to characterize recently emerged strains of Shiga toxin-producing Shigella flexneri with epidemiological links to the island of Hispañola. These strains pose a threat to public health since similar Shiga-toxin producing bacteria have been directly associated with bloody diarrhea and hemolytic uremic syndrome, a severe and life-threatening kidney damaging sequela. One of the aims of Natasha’s work is to determine the mechanism by which the toxin is released from bacterial cells since earlier work demonstrated that the toxin is not released via known secretion mechanisms.