Caleb Burke won the Allan A. Ichida Undergraduate Research Award at the conference. His presentation was on “Identification of Novel Biofilm-Specific RNAs (sRNAs) in Staphylococcus aureus.”
Ohio University students presented their research at the Ohio Branch of the American Society for Microbiology’s annual conference at Otterbein University—taking both graduate and undergraduate awards.
Three research groups (including graduate and undergraduate students) from OHIO were represented at the conference, specifically the groups of Dr. Nathan Weyand and Dr. Ronan Carroll, both of Biological Sciences, and Dr. Erin Murphy from Biomedical Sciences. Undergraduate students and graduate students from all three lab presented data at the conference March 31 through April 1.
Caleb Burke and Megan Fris
Megan Fris, a graduate student from Murphy’s lab, won the Donald C. Cox Award for Best Poster Presentation. Her title was “RyfA and RyfB sRNA pairs are important for regulation of Shigella dysenteriae pathogenesis.”
Caleb Burke, a Biological Sciences undergraduate, won the Allan A. Ichida Undergraduate Research Award at the conference. His presentation was on “Identification of Novel Biofilm-Specific RNAs (sRNAs) in Staphylococcus aureus.” He conducted undergraduate research with Carroll.
Abstract: In Staphylococcus aureus very little is known about the regulation, function, or mechanism of action of most small regulatory RNAs (sRNAs). sRNA genes are typically absent from genome annotation files and, as a consequence, their existence is often overlooked, particularly in global transcriptomic studies. Recently we performed a study that catalogued and annotated sRNA genes on the genome of the S. aureus community-associated, methicillin resistant (MRSA) strain USA300. The newly created USA300 Genbank genome file is a valuable resource that facilitates improved detection and analysis of sRNAs in S. aureus. In this study, we performed an RNAseq of S. aureus USA300 growing as a biofilm in order to (i) identify novel sRNAs that are uniquely expressed in a biofilm, and (ii) to determine global transcription changes in known sRNAs during biofilm growth. This analysis led to the discovery of 19 previously unidentified sRNAs which we termed biofilm specific RNA (bsr1-19). In addition we identified known sRNAs that are significantly up-regulated and down-regulated during growth as a biofilm. Finally, to test the contribution of sRNAs to biofilm growth we identified and knocked out the genes for 19 sRNAs that are up-regulated during biofilm growth and assessed the ability of each mutant to form a biofilm.
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