News

Summer community of Scholars 2024 stars

Marina Ajinov, Shaniya Plump and Carrie Waugh taking three (!) poster prizes in the UAH Summer Community of Scholars event on September 19,  2024! These are such brilliant young researchers what made this productive summer great and memorable! I am also incredibly proud of all graduate students who were supervising, mentoring, and supporting these investigators! and Many thanks to the UAH RCEU program and Honors College for supporting summer research at UAH! 

Congratulations! 🎉🎉🎉

Presentation win

Lanie Briggs, PhD student in our group won prize at the annual meeting of the FTPP Future Technologies and Enabling plasma processes consortium 2024 for her poster entitled: Assessing The Microbicidal Effects of Argon and Helium Operated Plasma Jets for Advanced Planetary Protection.

 Congratulations!


(Photo of Lanie Briggs and Dr. Gary Zank on the right >>> )

Lead student Layla Jeries, Courtesy of Katie Lott

Our study in the news

Thanks to the UAH press release on our recent study of pediatric urobiome (https://www.uah.edu/news/items/one-of-the-first-of-its-kind-uah-study-characterizes-urinary-microbes-in-children) - we got some exposure to diverse specialized health/urology news, e.g. in Urology Times: https://www.urologytimes.com/view/pediatric-urinary-microbiome-composition-is-associated-with-recurrent-uti.

Doctor Velez Justiniano!

This year the very first PhD student from Sysoeva lab was officially hooded at the Spring commencement ceremony! 

Brilliant Dr. Velez Justiniano gave me the honor to walk with all fresh graduates down the isle of the Von Braun Center and see her get the official diploma of Doctor of Philosophy degree from Dean Hakkala and shake hands with the UAH President Karr. It was an immense pleasure and joy to work with Yo-Ann on the microbiological problems associated with human space exploration. It makes me proud to see her tremendous successes and to be privileged to continue our collaborations as colleagues. 

Be on a lookout for our next joint adventure: running experiments on orbit at the International Space Station next year in the team with PhD students Lanie Briggs and Amy Le Bleu De Bartola and ... drum roll ... NASA astronauts!  (signed - proud PI-mama)

ASM Microbe 2024

June 2024 - UPLab, represented by Lanie Briggs, Layla Jeries, Amy LeBleu DeBartola, and Kaylie Hintze, visited ASM Microbe 2024 meeting In Atlanta, GA. It was an amazing meeting with lots of science about all and every aspect of microbial beings. 

Kaylie presented in the EEB track her investigation into the intractions of lactobacilli isolated from urinary tract. Lanie presented her work In the CIV track in collaboration with Xu lab on using cold plasma for catheter desinfection. 

Urobiome in children

May 2024

Layla Jeries has published an overview of the current knowledge about the human urinary microbiome in childhood.The paper appears in the special issue at the Frontiers in Pediatrics.  This work reviews what we know about composition of this microbial niche, gaps in our knowledge and challenges associated with studying this low biomass microbiome.

This work published concurrently with our collaborative study on pediatric urobiome sponsored by the CAIRIBU Collaboration award and published in Journal of Pediatric Urology. The results of our pilot study of catheterized urine of 54 young children showed presence of diverse bacterial community with composition changing amongst individuals, sexes and with age.

Layla Jeries investigates human urobiome composition and function




Urinary Lactobacilli inhibit growth of uropathogens

MAY 2022

Check out the publication from Sysoeva lab reporting on newly found interactions between urinary microbiome inhabitants - lactobacilli - and incoming pathogens:

Commensal urinary lactobacilli inhibit major uropathogens in vitro with heterogeneity at species and strain level. Johnson JA, Delaney LF, Ojha V, Rudraraju M, Hintze KR, Siddiqui NY, Sysoeva TA Front. Cell. Infect. Microbiol. May 2022 doi: 10.3389/fcimb.2022.870603 

This work was completed in close collaboration between undergraduate students James Johnson (Biology, 2021), Lydia Delaney (Nursing 2021), Kaylie Hintze (rising senior) and AEOP Program High School students, Vaishali Ojha and Medha Radraraju.

Chae Hee Lim Presents at American Urological Association Meeting

MAY 2022

Chae Hee Lim presented work on sequencing a collection of recent carbapenem resistant isolates. 

“Participation in the annual meeting for the 2022 American Urological Association (especially in-person) was a huge eye-opening experience for me, where every single day was full of new knowledge, up-to-date research presentations, and opportunities to connect with scientists and doctors from all over the world. It surely widened my perspective on how I should strive to be a developing doctor and scientist.”

— Chae Hee Lim

Graduate Student Katie Lott Completes NASA Internship Fall 2021

In this internship, Katie Lott worked on the issue of biofilm formation in the water processing assembly (WPA) on the International Space Station (ISS). Biofilm formation can clog the pipes in the WPA, as well as lead to biofouling, or corrosion of the pipes. To study this problem, WPA water samples are sent to Earth for analysis, but the trip usually takes two weeks and the bacterial composition is not always the same. Katie was involved in the development and preliminary testing of a filter-chamber device to separate the water sample into biofilm growth, planktonic growth, and purified water. This separation would allow for a more accurate snapshot of the microbial composition, and thus more accurate testing / samples for experimental biofilm mitigation efforts in ground testing, as well as aid in ISS minION testing. Katie also performed laboratory research involving antimicrobial sensitivity testing with various bacterial and fungal WPA isolates for use in future bioreactor studies, as well as prepping the bioreactors for use. Additionally, Katie researched in-space sterilization methods, and contributed a chapter on In-Situ Resource Utilization and use of biofilms in space to a NASA paper.

Sysoeva Lab Receives CAIRIBU Collaboration Grant

Dr. Tatyana Sysoeva received a CAIRIBU collaboration grant  with Dr. Maryellen Kelly (Duke University) and Dr. Lisa Karstens (Oregon Health and Science University) to complete work on the composition of the urinary microbiome in children. You can read more here. 

SEB and FL Joint Virtual Meeting

MAR 25 2021

And we are back to conferencing! Almost a year since shutdown... 

Brad Land presented his first short talk at the conference to attendees from both ASM branches - Florida and Southeastern  - and did a great job! Great way to start the spring with great science sharing despite all the setbacks of 2020. It was great to see all friends and colleagues from the last in-person SEB meeting (2020) too!

First Lab publication is out!

Congratulations to our alum Tamara Zaza and collaborators - the very first urinary microbiome paper was just released in Scientific Reports! Check out our work here on testing five commercial DNA extraction kits for their efficiency of urinary microbiome analysis.

Karstens L., Siddiqui N.Y., Zaza T., Barstad A., Amundsen C.L., Sysoeva T.A., Benchmarking DNA isolation kits used in analyses of the urinary microbiome. Sci Rep 11, 6186 (2021) 

Congratulations to all students who completed or attempted the Fall 2020 semester! Happy New Year to all and Good luck in the Spring! 

To add some positivity at the end of this brutal semester and 2020 in general - watch this Flash News about Alpaca Nanobodies in COVID-research and....an opinionated public representative! 

All credits go to Brad Land and Caroline Dixon - thank you for sharing with us!

This is a funny take on some current events, opinions, as well as new scientific discovery:-) 

Seminar Stars

NOV 6, 2020

Double departmental seminar by Katie Lott and Brad Land! Check out their wonderful presentations in the recording here. It is exciting to see the plans to map out the initial events in classic F plasmid conjugation that remain a mystery for many decades!

Land Proposal

SEP 14, 2020

Our very first Master program student Brad Land presents his proposal to the committee and gets positive feedback and an okay to continue on his exciting project on surface exclusion mechanism! His department presentation of this proposal is scheduled for Oct 30th.

Elam Presents

AUG 28, 2020

Today marks the first Department presentation by our group! Lauren Elam presented her great work on analysis of whole genome assembly of multidrug resistant isolates to the department and got some exciting questions we will follow up on. We are looking forward to more exciting presentations from the lab later in the semester - mark your calendars for Sept 11th, Oct 30th, and Dec 4th!

Mask Mandates

AUG 20, 2020

The Department of Biological Sciences posts an article by Katie Lott about our recent interview-experiment to the WAFF48 TV channel. Good job Katie on composing this article! 

"Even with the current Alabama mask mandate and months of counsel from medical professionals, there are many people that still refuse to wear a mask. In an effort to show the effectiveness of mask wearing in preventing the spread of infectious diseases such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Payton Walker from WAFF 48 News joined our own Dr. Tanya Sysoeva for an experiment. In this experiment Ms. Walker and Dr. Sysoeva each talked, sang, and coughed for 5-10 seconds in front of their own individual sets of TSA Blood Agar plates."

Check the full article and experiment out here and the WAFF48 interview here.

ASM Microbe 2020

This week the very first poster from our group for a national meeting went live! Lauren Elam's work on the analysis of recent carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae isolates was accepted to the ASM Microbe 2020 meeting. Congratulations, Lauren!