Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) involve students with an international group of scientists who are gathering, analyzing, and communicating their research in biology. Professor Amy Sprenkle has brought two exciting CUREs to our Biology department.
The BIO 304 Microbiology & Its Applications lab uses the Tiny Earth curriculum, which is aimed toward solving an important problem: the lack of antibiotics to treat antibiotic-resistant infections. Microbes make antibiotics to inhibit the growth of other microbes, which helps them to compete for resources in their environment. Human medicine simply figured out how to isolate those compounds and use them to treat infections. In BIO304 lab, students bring in their own soil sample, find bacteria in those soil samples by growing them safely in the lab, identify the bacteria and then determine whether they make antibiotics. Take BIO304 and join the Tiny Earth initiative in “studentsourcing antibiotic discovery” to tackle the issue of the diminishing supply of effective antibiotics!
The second CURE that Dr. Sprenkle has brought to our curriculum is called the SEA-PHAGES program. This CURE has three components. In the special section of BIO132 Introduction to Cells lab, students engage in “Phage Discovery” and use soil samples to safely isolate, purify, and amplify phages, which are viruses that infect bacteria. Then, in the BIO318 Virology and Bioinformatics course, students use genetic sequencing data to annotate the genome of the phages. Professor Sprenkle and her students are on track to contribute at least two novel actinobacteriophages discovered at SSU to an international scientific database! Finally, students have an opportunity to present their work at the SEA-PHAGES Symposium. Cassandra Kysilovsky (BS BIO 2019) and Dr. Amy Sprenkle attended the SEA-PHAGES Symposium in June 2019, and hope that as COVID-19 subsides, attendance at a future symposium will be possible.
By offering these CUREs, SSU Biology students gain experiential, hands-on learning in the lab and collect and curate meaningful data for the scientific community. Add critical thinking, careful record-keeping, and writing and communication skills, and these CUREs will serve to launch students into any science or health care field they desire—not as germaphobes but as superorganisms!