News

Hot off the Press! Check out the latest publication from Sysoeva Lab:

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

More about the authors: James Johnson (Biology, 2021) and Lydia Delaney (Nursing 2021) are UAH alumni. Kaylie Hintze (rising senior) is a current Biology undergraduate, while Vaishali Ojha and Medha Radraraju are two high school students who participated in the AEOP program in the Summer of 2021.


Chae Hee Lim Presents at American Urological Association Meeting--May 2022

Chae Hee 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 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, March 25-26 2021

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

Brad 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 on testing five commercial DNA extraction kits for their efficiency of urinary microbiome analysis - https://rdcu.be/cgU29.

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:-)

  • Nov 6th 2020 - Double departmental seminar by Katie and Brad! Check out their wonderful presentations in recording. 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!

  • Sept 14th 2020 - our very first Master program student Brad Land presents his proposal to the committee and gets positive feedback and an ok to continue on his exciting project on surface exclusion mechanism! His Department presentation of this proposal is scheduled for Oct 30th.

  • Aug 28th 2020 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!


"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.

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