Bacteriophages: Nature’s bacterial killers

June 18, 2024

New research led by the University of Utah and University College London (UCL) has found that plant bacterial pathogens are able to repurpose elements of their own bacteriophages, or phages, to wipe out competing microbes. These surprise findings suggest such phage-derived elements could someday be harnessed as an alternative to antibiotics, according to Talia Karasov, an assistant professor in the U’s School of Biological Sciences.

This result was hardly what she expected to find when she embarked on this research with an international team of scientists. Microbial pathogens are all around, but only a fraction of the time do they sicken humans, other animals or plants, according to Karasov, whose primary research interest is in interactions between plants and microbial pathogens. The Karasov lab is seeking to understand the factors that lead to sickness and epidemics versus keeping the pathogens in check.

“We see that no single lineage of bacteria can dominate. We wondered whether the phages, the pathogens of our bacterial pathogens, could prevent single lineages from spreading – maybe phages were killing some strains and not others. That’s where our study started, but that’s not where it ended up,” Karasov said. “We looked in the genomes of plant bacterial pathogens to see which phages were infecting them. But it wasn’t the phage we found that was interesting. The bacteria had taken a phage and repurposed it for warfare with other bacteria, now using it to kill competing bacteria.”

A thale cress specimen collected in 1866 in Germany and preserved in a herbarium in Tubingen. Credit: Burbano lab, University College London.

Mining herbarium specimens for their microbial DNA

Burbano has pioneered the use of herbarium specimens to explore the evolution of plants and their microbial pathogens. His lab sequences the genomes of both host plants and those of the microbes associated with the plant at the time of collection more than a century ago.

For the phage research, Burbano analyzed historical specimens of Arabidopsis thaliana, a plant from the mustard family commonly called thale cress, collected in southwestern Germany, comparing them and the microbes they harbored to plants growing today in the same part of Germany. Lead author Talia Backman wonders if tailocins could help solve the impending crisis in antibiotic resistance seen in harmful bacteria that infect humans.

“We as a society are in dire need of new antibiotics, and tailocins have potential as new antimicrobial treatments,” said Backman, a graduate student in the Karasov lab. “While tailocins have been found previously in other bacterial genomes, and have been studied in lab settings, their impact and evolution in wild bacterial populations was not known. The fact that we found that these wild plant pathogens all have tailocins and these tailocins are evolving to kill neighboring bacteria shows how significant they may be in nature.”

Discover the full story behind bacteriophages and their antibiotic potential by Brian Maffly at @The U. More on this story at earth.com.

Championing Representation & Advocacy in Healthcare

June 12, 2024

Participating in the English as a Second Language (ESL) Express Registration event at SLCC as a peer mentor leader.

Gamarra’s exciting educational milestone boils down to personal triumph, mentorship, and resilience. Navigating her family’s adopted home of the U.S., she began her undergraduate studies early during high school, completing concurrent enrollment classes through Salt Lake Community College before finishing her degree at the U.

In the university setting Gamarra found guidance and community through the Refugees Exploring the Foundations of Undergraduate Education In Science (REFUGES) Bridge Program (REFUGES), designed to support students with tools for college and career readiness. Founded by physics faculty member Tino Nyawelo, the program proved to be a pivotal support system for Gamarra. “From the start, I've always wanted to do medicine," she reflects. “That was my goal. And so having Tino’s program, there was a huge help in acclimating to the new campus and getting to know faculty, staff, and other students. And it really helped me network really well from the start, and feel more comfortable.” Through the program, she not only found her footing in the academic landscape but also discovered her capacity for leadership and mentorship, being able to give back as a science and mathematics tutor.

Gamarra is quick to open up about her upbringing and how her family’s challenges during her childhood impacted her present journey: “My parents are immigrants from Peru and their transition to the U.S, especially navigating healthcare, was a challenge. I suffered from a brain tumor as a child, so a big motivation for them moving to the U.S. was to make sure I received the best treatment possible. This whole process opened my eyes to the strengths and struggles of our current healthcare system, and ways I can help make it better.”

Drawing from her family's experiences, Gamarra is prepared to think beyond traditional healthcare expectations by providing care for her future patients on more than just a physical level, emphasizing the importance of equity, inclusion, and community on health and well-being. She has been involved in several projects that provide guidance to Latinx families about free health-related resources and volunteers her time as a Spanish and English translator. Her interactions with patients, families and mentors are what fueled her determination to continue pursuing medicine. She is particularly interested in helping foster a greater sense of trust between physicians and their patients, which she sees as key to success.

At the Mitaka Picture Book initiative in Japan, reading Spanish to Japanese children and their families.

Transcending cultural and linguistic barriers

With an interest in global health and social justice, Gamarra envisions a career that transcends borders and barriers. In her final year at the U, she attended the Oxford Consortium for Human Rights based in the UK, where she drew a strong parallel between health and human rights. With her group she presented on climate refugees and the barriers to accessing healthcare, as well as discussing health from a cultural point of view considering the existence of traditional medicine. Upon returning to Utah, she helped create the podcast RadioNatura, opening up these discussions to a global audience. This commitment to removing cultural and linguistic barriers defines Gamarra's vision for her future in medicine.

With a degree in biology and a minor in pediatric clinical research, Gamarra will begin medical school this August with an interest in pediatrics. She hopes to expand on her expertise and knowledge: “Presenting different studies that doctors in the University of Utah health community are doing really opened my eyes to the vulnerability of children,” she states. “I see the field of pediatrics as a promising one because I can have a long-term impact and build strong relationships with families, providing comprehensive care that considers the well-being of both the child and the family unit.”

‘Doing More’ is a subjective term

Though Gamarra has experienced many ups and downs on her path, she has always remained focused on her goals. “I would be lying if I said this whole journey was smooth,” she admits. “It was actually extremely rocky. There were times I doubted myself because there was always a thought in my mind that I could be doing more. But I realized that ‘more’ is subjective. It is less about accumulating experiences and more about the reflections and growth that comes out of those experiences.” While Gamarra admits that she once admired people with busy calendars, she no longer glamorizes it: “Being ‘busy’ without time to self-reflect is not the path I want to take in my life.”

As she prepares to embark on the next chapter of her life — medical school — Gamarra carries with her the support of those who helped her along the way. “I just focus on the people that were there for me, and I think that because of the REFUGES Program, Tino is a wonderful person that was there for me. He was someone that saw me through this journey, and that is still with me through this next journey, which I value a lot.”

In Kimberly Gamarra, the U’s School of Medicine has found more than just a future doctor, but an individual who will undoubtedly create change and strengthen communities wherever she goes.

By Julia St. Andre

Finding new ant species in a SLC backyard

June 5, 2024

Jack Longino likes to spend his weekends close to the ground. He often wears a vest that holds fifteen tiny vials filled with alcohol and a backpack with about 100 more.

“People look at me and they think I’ve got a bullet belt,” he said.

Longino uses the vials to carefully collect and preserve ants. “I end up with thousands of tiny little bottles of alcohol with dead ants in them,” he said.

He has traveled and documented ants extensively in Central America, but Longino is “interested in ant diversity anywhere I am.”

Luckily, ants are just about everywhere and each zone — from the marshes of the Great Salt Lake to high elevation Alta to the West Desert — has its own set of species.

In 2018 Longino was hanging out in the backyard of his Salt Lake City home when he noticed an unusual group of ants normally found in tropical habitats. Very few of that particular species were recorded in the Western U.S. At first he assumed they had come from Southern Arizona, perhaps hitched a ride on potting soil.

Read the full article by reporter Sofia Jeremias in the Salt Lake Tribune. (Pay wall)

A Tale of Two Worms: Advancing Epigenetics

June 4, 2024

Have you ever wondered how a cell knows whether it’s supposed to be skin or muscle? Or philosophized about “nature vs. nurture,” that is, how contributions from both genetics and the environment influence physical phenotypes? Epigenetics, a relatively new field in biology, helps explain the mechanistic basis for this phenomenon—and is the field I have chosen to dedicate my doctoral studies at the University of Utah.

Audrey Brown

I sometimes find the easiest way to describe epigenetics is using a metaphor. Imagine that the DNA within a cell is an instruction manual. It contains all the instructions necessary for cellular functions — but this manual can also be modified. Epigenetic modifications (“epi” meaning “on top of”) are like “sticky-notes,” a set of additional instructions on top of the manual. These notes contain directions like “make more of this gene here” or “turn this gene off completely.” In reality, these notes take the form of chemical tags added to the DNA itself or to proteins associated with the DNA. Scientists like myself and my colleagues in Michael Werner’s lab at the School of Biological Sciences are trying to understand what type of information each of these modifications encodes, and how the set of modifications is changed by external environmental factors.

I recently co-authored a paper in Genetics addressing this last point. For this study, we created and compared lists of all the epigenetic genes present in these two worms. For the most part they contained a similar repertoire of epigenetic genes, yet we found one striking difference: P. pacificus is missing an epigenetic protein complex called PRC2. This was a surprising result since PRC2 is one of the most conserved epigenetic protein complexes, and is essential for various cellular functions, including cell differentiation and gene repression. So how is P. pacificus able to survive without it? We found one clue with the help of Ofer Rog’s lab at the U. We were able to detect the enzymatic output of the PRC2 complex (i.e. the specific “sticky-note” it writes), which led us to conclude that a different, yet unknown enzyme has taken over the function of PRC2 in P. pacificus.

Read more of Audrey Brown's article about these advancements in epigenetics in @The U.

Establishing a “Wildfire Resilience Collective”

May 13, 2024

Establishing a Wildfire Resilience Collective

May 13, 2024

By Hannah Meier, PhD Student, School of Biological Sciences

Photo above, from left to right]: Tegan Lengyel, PhD (Anderegg lab), Elizabeth Williams, Hannah Meier (DYCE and Reimer lab), Rebecca Senft (Aprecido lab), Annie Carlile, (Bowling lab).

In January, my teammates and I dedicated 24 hours of our weekend to immerse ourselves in the pressing issues of wildland fire resilience in the West. Joining the Wilkes Center Climate Solutions Hackathon offered a valuable break from the routine grind of a first-year PhD student in biology.

Hannah Meier

Our team’s final project, establishing the Wildfire Resilience Collective ended up winning first place. However, the true highlight was the collaborative effort among students from various majors, urging us to tackle the issue from diverse perspectives and glean insights from each other.

Our team consists of PhD students from the Ecology, Evolution, and Organismal Biology in the School of Biological Sciences, and one undergraduate, a pre-med student studying Biomedical Engineering. The education and interests of each team member provide a wealth of foundational knowledge, but, most importantly, we share a common goal of utilizing our research to inform policymakers and stakeholders in shaping land use decisions, which motivated our participation in the Wilkes hackathon.

But what exactly is a hackathon? While often associated with coding challenges, its essence lies in rapidly developing solutions within a condensed time frame. Our team’s focus was far removed from coding. We aimed to grasp the impact of wildfires on community resilience and the mechanisms behind fostering such resilience.

Central to our discussions were inquiries into the meaning of resilience, both in ecological and communal contexts. We landed on a definition of resilience as a community’s or ecosystem’s ability to absorb changes while maintaining established relationships, both within and across organisms.

Read the rest of the story at the Wilkes Center.

Humans of the U: Erik Smith

May 1, 2024

I started skiing when I was around three years old. My family had a tradition of going skiing together once a year. When I was in middle school, I started getting a season pass each year. Around this time, I also began snowboarding, which I have been doing ever since.

During my senior year of college, I applied to dental school and I made it all the way through interviews. From there, I just had to wait. I didn’t hear anything for about two months. It was a rough time because I just had no idea if I was going to get into school. While I was waiting, I used my downtime to go snowboarding. I wanted to try making my own wax, so I decided to do it for fun.

The wax ended up gaining some traction with others. At the time, I was a TA in a biochemistry lab. Over the course of a few months, I used all the resources I had to create the wax. Some professors in the College of Science and Department of Biochemistry helped me access some more, and I decided to go for it and create my business, Board Budder.

Read the rest of Erik's story in his own words in @ The U.

From Ecology To Impact Investing: Nalini Nadkarni

April 29, 2024

Harnessed and helmeted, ecologist Nalini Nadkarni has ascended the towering strangler figs of the Costa Rican rainforest to observe the many plants, animals, and microbes that live in the upper canopy. She has done the same in the temperate forests of Washington state. As a forest canopy researcher, this has been her work for four decades. She has published more than 150 scientific papers and articles and was named a National Geographic Explorer at Large in 2023. But that is not where her efforts stop.

Reaching far beyond the scientific community, she has created science education programs for people who are incarcerated, programming for churches and synagogues, and worked with Mattel to create a set of Explorer Barbies to inspire girls to study nature. These efforts speak to Nadkarni’s desire to broaden her reach beyond academia to ensure trees do not go overlooked. That, despite their silent and sedentary nature, people would recognize the multiple ways trees enrich our lives and life on our planet.

It is with this same spirit of creating connections that Nadkarni became a Sorenson Impact Institute Senior Fellow in Residence. She said she sees a great deal of common ground and potential for complementary efforts between ecology and social impact investment. As the Institute’s newest fellow, she will bring her expertise, experiences, and contacts in ecology, conservation biology, and the environment to the Institute to create new pathways to connect ecological actions and programs with the power and mission of impact investment.

Read more about Nadkarni’s career and her vision for her work with the Sorenson Impact Institute at Forbes.

Biologist Eron Powell: Student Commencement Speaker

April 29, 2024

“Outside of college and into the future, I hope to always be able to educate myself,” Powell said. “We are never complete people. We have to keep working on ourselves. That is the fun of living—learning to be a better person who is more kind, more compassionate and more caring.”

Twenty-six-year-old Powell grew up in Emmett, Idaho, with his seven siblings. Graduating with a Bachelor of Science in biology, he was drawn to the U because of the school’s research opportunities and the prestige of the U’s College of Science.

Though Powell faced many challenges during his first year of college, from health issues to adapting to rigorous course work to finding his place among strangers, there is a lot he will miss about being a U student.

“As we approach commencement, I’m sadder than I thought I would be,” Powell said. “I thought I’d be so excited, but I really loved my experience at the U. So it’s hard that it’s ending.”

Read the full article by Maitlyn Mortensen in @ The U.

The General Commencement ceremony where Powell will speak will be held on Thursday, May 2 at 6 p.m. in the Jon M. Huntsman Center. Read more about the 2024 commencement here.

Arbor Day & Cottam’s Gulch

April 26, 2024

Back in the 1930s, University of Utah administrators had a plan for a natural gully that ran past the then-new Thomas Building (now housing the Crocker Science Center) south of Presidents Circle. That proposal was to fill it and and stick more buildings there.

Botany professor Walter Cottam had a different idea for the spot. How about a botanical feature filled with exotic trees? This vision for what became known as Cottam’s Gulch somehow prevailed, and ultimately proliferated around the U where Cottam and colleagues went on a decades-long tree-planting spree.

Thanks to those efforts, the Utah Legislature in 1961 designated the booming campus as the state’s official arboretum, to “provide resources and facilities for cultivating a greater knowledge and public appreciation for the trees and plants around us, as well as those growing in remote sections of the country and world.”

More than 60 years later, main campus is home to 9,600 trees representing 250 species and many more different varieties within species. With Arbor Day upon us (April 26), now is the time to tour the campus arboretum with trees beginning to leaf and blossom.

Bring a smartphone so you can scan the QR codes found on placards attached to about 100 trees, most of them within or near Presidents Circle.

Read the full story by Brian Maffly and take a guided tour of the gulch in @ The U. Read a previous article about Cottam's Gulch by Ann Jardine Bardsley BA'84 here.

Humans of the U: Gabe Brown

April 26, 2024

I really like working in Austin’s lab not only because he’s a really supportive mentor (and fellow nerd), but also because we work with the Sageland Collaborative, a Utah based nonprofit I really admire. I find their commitment to community engagement, collaboration with policymakers, and applied science to be very inspiring. I think those are three things that are really important in conservation; scientific research, because you need to have the understanding of what’s going on to manage effectively; collaboration, because you need to work with people who have the power to make changes; and then—the most important thing for me—is engaging the public in conservation of their local ecosystem. I am really passionate about people’s connection to land, and how our experiences shape our perception of nature and what things are worth conserving.

It’s funny—the fact that my research lab uses cameras is completely incidental to my other passion, filmmaking. I’ve also always loved film, but I also knew early on that I didn’t want to work in Hollywood, or live in LA. I love the creativity possible in film, but I have always loved science more. I went into school not thinking I would ever do a film degree, but then I found out about the U’s documentary minor program. Through the program I’ve been able to refine my skills as a filmmaker and meet some incredibly talented friends along the way.

I’m really interested in human ecology and conservation, and how people are connected to the land that sustains them. Right now, I’m doing a student fellowship with a local nonprofit called Leicester Productions to make a short film about Great Salt Lake. The group I’m focusing on is called the Youth Coalition for the Great Salt Lake. Many of the members of the coalition are queer or come from other underrepresented groups, and I think it’s really important to amplify those kinds of voices in environmental spaces.

Read the full story in @ the U.

College of Science

School of Biological Sciences

Bacteriophages: Nature’s bacterial killers

Bacteriophages : Nature's bacterial killers

Bacteriophages, viruses that attack and destroy bacteria, are everywhere in the natural world where they play a vital role in regulating microbe populations in ways that are not yet well understood.

Mining herbarium specimens for their microbial DNA

Championing Representation & Advocacy in Healthcare

Championing Representation & Advocacy in Healthcare

Transcending cultural and linguistic barriers

‘Doing More’ is a subjective term

Finding new ant species in a SLC backyard

Utah’s ant man found a new species in his backyard

University of Utah professor Jack Longino’s research mainly takes him to Central America, but on the weekend he collects and examines the diverse ant species around him.

A Tale of Two Worms: Advancing Epigenetics

A Tale of Two Worms : Advancing Epigenetics

Why an important epigenetic gene is missing in some species of roundworm.

Establishing a “Wildfire Resilience Collective”

Establishing a Wildfire Resilience Collective

In January, my teammates and I dedicated 24 hours of our weekend to immerse ourselves in the pressing issues of wildland fire resilience in the West. Joining the Wilkes Center Climate Solutions Hackathon offered a valuable break from the routine grind of a first-year PhD student in biology.

Humans of the U: Erik Smith

Humans of the U: Erik Smith

Last spring, I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in biology and a minor in chemistry. Now I am a student in the Master of Business Creation program.

From Ecology To Impact Investing: Nalini Nadkarni

From Ecology To Impact Investing

Biologist Eron Powell: Student Commencement Speaker

shaping students into people of excellence

For the 2024 University of Utah student commencement speaker Eron Powell, a love of learning is one of the most important things he is taking away from his time at the U.

Arbor Day & Cottam’s Gulch

Arbor Day & Cottam's Gulch

On this Arbor Day: The legacy of botanist Walter Cottam transformed U campus into a living laboratory. How the university became Utah's official arboretum, home to 9,600 trees on its main campus, featuring at least 250 species from around the world.

Humans of the U: Gabe Brown

Humans of the U: Gabe Brown

“I’ve always loved the outdoors. I grew up here in Utah going on backpacking trips in places like the High Uintas. So, I knew I wanted to do something in conservation and fortunately, I found myself working in Austin Green’s lab, who uses trail cameras to understand local ecosystems.