Meet the Microbiologist

Gigi Kwik Gronvall talks to MTM about the importance of biopreparedness. Gronvall discusses her work in creating policies around potential natural, accidental, and man-made pandemics. She describes her experiences running pandemic thought exercises that help researchers, public health workers, and governmental officials apply preparedness ideas to real-world simulations. Host: Julie Wolf Julie's biggest takeaways: Thought exercises and scenarios work well for people to understand how technology, communications, human behaviors can affect the spread of infectious disease. Many after-action reports after major biosecurity breaches, such as the Dugway contamination event, where inactivated Bacillus anthracis was accidentally shipped without being inactivated. These involve reports on what went wrong, who made mistakes, and how to prevent repeats of these errors going forward. International groups such as the Global Health Security Alliance work with governments and institutions around the world to run dialogs and talk about biosecurity issues, safety issues, pathogen management issues. Comparing notes across countries helps to harmonize policies and find gaps that need addressing. Bringing scientists into the policy-making meetings is the best way to write regulations in a way to protect the public, the scientists, and the research itself. Crafting good recommendations for governance prevents writing regulations that can be hard to remove. Featured Quotes (in order of appearance): “There’s a public health infrastructure that’s needed to detect epidemics and respond to them appropriately. If you are lacking that infrastructure, it’s like not having a fire department anywhere close when there’s a fire. The fire gets bigger and bigger, it becomes much more difficult to be able to put out the fire, and a lot of lives are lost.” “The thinking behind the GHSA is to boost public health infrastructure in different parts of the world that need it and to focus donor attention on some of those areas so that the weakest links are made stronger." “It’s going to shock no one, but it’s not always the case that the best scientific information is brought to bear on a policy issue." “You have to do what you can to make things a little bit harder, a little bit more challenging but still allow real, legitimate, important science to continue. Everybody sees that balance a little bit differently." “It’s important to me that we have someone advocating for the science and making it so it’s not onerous to be a scientist." “Synthetic biology changes the way we think about what biology can do. Biology has a bigger potential to be involved in industrial processes than it used to have." “The problem with a lot of these pathogens is that they exist in nature...you can’t take care of all options, unfortunately." "You can’t ever be fully prepared, but you can be in the right mindset to be surprised." Links for this episode Gigi Kwik Gronvall website at Johns Hopkins University SPARS epidemic pamphlet Preparing for Bioterrorism: The Alfred P Sloan Foundation’s Leadership in Biosecurity: Book by Gronvall Synthetic Biology: Safety, Security, and Bioterrorism: Book by Gronvall The Global Health Security Alliance homepage Send your stories about our guests and your comments (email or recorded audio) to jwolf@asmusa.org.

Jack Gilbert talks about his studies on microbiomes of all sorts. He describes the origin of the Earth Microbiome Project, which has ambitions to characterize all microbial life on the planet, and talks more specifically about the built microbiome of manmade ecosystems such as hospitals. Gilbert explains how advances in scientific techniques have driven past microbiome-related discoveries and will continue to do so in the future. Host: Julie Wolf Subscribe (free) on iPhone, Android, RSS, or by email. You can also listen on your mobile device with the ASM Podcast app. Julie's biggest takeaways: Insect-pathogenic fungi living in plant roots can pass nitrogen from killed insects to their plant hosts, receiving different carbon nutrients from the plants in return. Fungi harvested after growth on inexpensive materials like chicken droppings are used in agriculture both as fertilizer and as insecticide. Cyclosporine was first discovered in insect-pathogenic fungi. Raymond St. Leger and other scientists working to introduce genetically modified microbes into the environment deeply consider the societal effects of their work, including collaboration with local communities, governmental regulatory bodies, and trusted leaders and tailor their efforts to the regional area. Featured Quotes (in order of appearance): “We really can apply ecological understanding of microbiomes and microbial ecosystems to any environment.” “I think basic research is absolutely essential but I always want to think about what that could lead to in the future.” “Reproducibility is key and extraordinarily difficult in all fields of science due to lack of appropriate funding and a zeitgeist in science that discourages scientists from reproducing one another’s studies.” “We are forever striving to validate the predictions we derive from our descriptive work. We create SO MANY predictions!” “No small dreams, no small goals - go big or go home! At the end of the day, we all want to feel like we’re doing something that makes an impact.” “I love to collaborate. I love to work with other people, brilliant people in the microbiome field” “I’m often accused of not being focused enough. What does Jack Gilbert do? Well, I do a little bit of everything - as long as there’s a microbe involved! I like it like that; it keeps me energized.” Links for this episode Jack Gilbert website at University of Chicago Jack Gilbert TedxNaperville Talk Earth Microbiome Project home page Dirt is Good - new book by Gilbert and Rob Knight History of Microbiology Tidbit: Joshua Lederberg piece in The Scientist on ‘microbiome’ nomenclature in 2001. Send your stories about our guests and your comments (email or recorded audio) to jwolf@asmusa.org.

Tara C. Smith discusses her work uncovering ties between agriculture and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). Her studies have found MRSA on and around pig farms, on animal handlers, and even in packaged meat in the grocery store. She also talks about using zombies as an allegory for infectious disease outbreak preparedness. Links for this episode Tara C. Smith website Aetiology Blog on Science Blogs Network Outbreak News Interview with Smith on her work communicating the science around vaccines and fighting anti-vaccine sentiments. Smith’s collected writings on Ebola and emerging infectious diseases Zombie Infections: Epidemiology, Treatment, and Prevention in the British Medical Journal History of Microbiology tidbit: Thomas Jukes’ 1968 Letter to the British Medical Journal and 1997 Recollections in Protein Science. Julie’s biggest takeaways: MRSA transitioned from primarily hospital-acquired to community-acquired infections in the 1990s. In the early 2000s, MRSA strains associated with livestock farming emerged in Europe. Smith’s group was the first to identify agriculture-associated MRSA strains in the United States. Tara found MRSA on the very first farm in which she and her colleagues looked for MRSA. The MRSA strain ST398 appears to have originated in people as MSSA then moved to livestock, where the strain acquired some antibiotic resistance related genes. This is because zoonotic diseases are a two-way street and microbes can pass from people to animals, as well as passed from animals to people. Many factors may contribute to MRSA contamination of consumer meat products: for one, MRSA in farms is aerosolized and the same may be true in meat processing facilities. People can also be colonized and spread from workers to products. It’s likely a mixture of strains from farms and strains from people working in the packing plants. Farms that raise animals without antibiotics were not positive for MRSA. Processing these animals at plants where conventional animals are raised creates potential for cross-contamination, however. Prophylactic and treatment applications of antibiotics are still allowed for livestock, but antibiotics used for growth promotion purposes were phased out in January 2017. Featured quotes: “I was in Iowa, the #1 pig-producing state. We started looking for MRSA + found them on the very 1st farm we sampled” “When we think of zoonotic diseases, usually we think of microbes that come from animals to people, but there can be bidirectional transmission. It’s definitely not just a one-way street “That it doesn’t cause disease in pigs made S. aureus invisible to people studying its epidemiology for quite a while” “Our biohazard people probably hated us because we had pounds and pounds of meat products we were checking” for MRSA "S. aureus is definitely not the only one - there’s lots of bacteria that are affected by use of antibiotics on farms” “Everything zombies now is a virus!” 

Raymond St. Leger describes his work on insect pathogenic fungi. Members of this diverse group of fungi can be found as part of the plant rhizosphere, where they provide nutrients to the plant, and can also be deployed as insect control agents. Raymond discusses his work with communities in Burkina Faso, where he works with officials to educate and gain consent for use of mosquito-killing fungi to control the spread of malaria. Host: Julie Wolf Subscribe (free) on iPhone, Android, RSS, or by email. You can also listen on your mobile device with the Microbeworld app. Julie's biggest takeaways: Insect-pathogenic fungi living in plant roots can pass nitrogen from killed insects to their plant hosts, receiving different carbon nutrients from the plants in return. Fungi harvested after growth on inexpensive materials like chicken droppings are used in agriculture both as fertilizer and as insecticide. Cyclosporine was first discovered in insect-pathogenic fungi. Raymond St. Leger and other scientists working to introduce genetically modified microbes into the environment deeply consider the societal effects of their work, including collaboration with local communities, governmental regulatory bodies, and trusted leaders and tailor their efforts to the regional area. Featured Quotes: "Possibly fungi kill more organisms than any other disease-causing agents." (2:55) "People are interested in how you can utilize a plant-root colonizing Metarhizium as a comprehensive biofertilizer." (14:30) "Put elite Metarhizium onto corn seeds and you can boost the growth of corn by about 30%." (14:50) "Mosquitos and malaria have no friends." (23:17) "If an insect is especially common, then a strain of Metarhizium will specialize to that insect." (24:35) “There’s a lot of different ethical, political, and social concerns we have to address and we have to resolve before any type of genetically manipulated product can be introduced. We even have questions about the meaning of informed consent!" (28: 30) "Synbio-phobia-phobia: the belief that genetic engineers have that people are going to be frightened of their work."(32:00) "In Burkina Faso, you can expect to get more than 200 bites from Anopholes gambiae a day. This is malaria central." (37:58) Links for this episode Raymond St. Leger website at the University of Maryland St. Leger lab research explained in a three-minute video NPR story covering fungal pesticides as alternatives to chemicals Discover Magazine blog on malaria-fighting Frankenfungus CHOMA tidbit: Felix d'Herelle and the Origins of Molecular Biology by Bill Summers (Excerpt of Chapter 3. Epizootics: Locusts in Argentina and Algeria). Send your stories about our guests and/or your comments (email or recorded audio) to jwolf@asmusa.org.

Vincent Racaniello discusses how he ended up studying polio virus and the three eureka moments he’s experienced so far: uncovering the polio genome, discovering the polio receptor, and generating a mouse model of polio disease. Vincent discusses his interest in science communications, including his blog and active podcast network. Host: Julie Wolf Activities of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis in the Field of Virus Research (free) on iPhone, Android, RSS, or by email. You can also listen on your mobile device with the Microbeworld app. Julie's biggest takeaways: All three polio virus serotypes are covered by the polio vaccine; type 2 has been eradicated and type 3 is close to being eradicated. Enterovirus 68 is a related enteroviruses that is associated with paralysis, but its receptor and disease progression remain largely unknown. Developing tools and techniques to study one virus that can cross into the central nervous system, such as polio, can set up a lab to study other neurotropic viruses, such as enterovirus 68 and Zika virus. All scientists with access to a computer and a social media account can be effective science communicators! Featured Quotes: "You have to find people to be mentors who you are going to listen to, and if they give you advice, you follow it." (6:57) "It took me one year to sequence the genome of polio, which you could do in five minutes today." (9:52) "We work on infectious agents and a big part of it is to eradicate them and alleviate human disease." (20:32) "On facebook, you’ve lots of friends who are following you; if you show them science, some of them will listen to it." (33:30) "We all have to share what we do. We’re funded mostly by tax dollars, and we have to let the public know what we do." (34:00) Links for this episode Vincent Racaniello Zika Diaries: a blog about the Racaniello lab experiences studying Zika Virus Virology Blog This Week in Virology Scientists: Engage the Public! CHOMA tidbit: Activities of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis in the Field of Virus Research by Paul de Kruif Send your stories about our guests and/or your comments (email or recorded audio) to jwolf@asmusa.org.

Welcome back, Meet the Scientist subscribers! For those of you who never heard an episode of Meet the Scientist, thanks for taking a listen. We're excited to tell all of you we're now Meet the Microbiologist (MTM). MTM is the same great, one-on-one conversations captured in Meet the Scientist just with a new name and a new host.  Julie Wolf of the American Society for Microbiology will be bringing back the podcast with all new episodes with scientists who work in one of the many areas of the microbial sciences — genomics, antibiotic resistance, virology, synthetic biology, emerging infectious diseases, microbial ecology, public health, probiotics, and more! The first two new episodes will be released September 28th, beginning with an episode with Vincent Racaneillo of This Week in Microbiology taking about his research on polio and Zika virus, and his experience as a science communicator. The other episode, released the same day, is with Raymond St. James discussing applications of insect-pathogenic fungi as plant fertilizers and mosquito control agents.  Make sure to subscribe, for free, wherever you listen to podcasts including iTunes, Android, or get each episode delivered by email. Subscribing to the podcast is the best way to make sure you never miss an episode! Talk to you soon!

In this podcast, I speak to Martin Blaser, Frederick H. King Professor of Internal Medicine and Chairman of the Department of Medicine and Professor of Microbiology at the New York School of Medicine. Blaser studies Helicobacter pylori, bacteria that live in the stomachs of billions of people. Blaser has shown that H. pylori has a strange double life inside of us. On the one hand, it can cause ulcers and gastric cancer. On the other hand, it can protect us from diseases of the esophagus, allergies, asthma, and perhaps even obesity. We're now eradicating H. pylori with antibiotics and other luxuries of modern life; Blaser thinks we ought to bring it back--but keep it on a tight leash.

All life hums with electricity, from our heartbeats to the electrons that flow to the oxygen we breathe.But some bacteria are electricians par excellence, generating electric currents in the soil and water. In this podcast, I talk to microbe-electricity expert Jeff Gralnick of the University of Minnesota about the biology behind these currents, and how engineers may be able to harness it to power technology.

In this podcast I talk to Jessica Green of the University of Oregon about aerobiology: the science of life in the air. We live in an invisible ocean of life, with millions of microbes swarming around us. Microbes can live many miles high in the upper atmosphere, and they may actually be able to feed and grow in clouds. Green and I talk not just about high-altitude aerobiology, but about the microbes we share our homes and offices with, and how better understanding them can help our health.

In this podcast, I talk to Charles Bamforth of the University of California, Davis, about the surprisingly complex chemistry of beer, and the pivotal role microbes play in making it happen.