I have finally updated my resume since beginning my graduate program and project within the Golos lab. I am preparing for a couple upcoming deadlines, one of which being an Abstract Submission for the International Federation of Placenta Associations conference which will be in Tokyo, Japan this fall! I plan to present RNAseq data in vitro infection of reproductive tissues on gene expression changes of some of the common virulent strains of Listeria monocytogenes.

My research has been a bit slow to get off the ground as I am consolidating years worth of fecal samples and outlining the animals and time points which will be most relevant for my microbiome studies. As always with spring break coming up and other studies arising, sometimes your thesis project has to take a back burner. I'm excited to analyze the RNA data and fingers crossed I'll be exploring Tokyo this fall!

During my first semester, I rotated through the Golos lab for 5 weeks. My project during that time was Listeria infection of a tissue culture using two different colored fluorescenly tagged bacterium. The purpose of the study was to test the efficiency of a pre-immunflourescent tagged strain, which would save processing time and reagents for tissue samples during animal experiments. I prepared and performed tissue cell cultures and bacterial cultures. I then inoculated the tissue samples with either the untagged or pre-tagged listeria, allowed the bacteria to infect the cells, and then the tissues are fixed with antibodies for histology analysis. The histology slides were then examined under fluorescent microscopy to image the bacteria. The two different colored bacteria can be seen below. The bright red or teal small rods are the Listeria bacteria, with the nuclei of the cells in navy and the cell membranes in green.