Guinea worm infections have been plaguing mankind throughout recorded history. The Carter Center took the lead in the guinea worm eradication effort in the 1980’s, when there were over 3 million cases per year. Through concentrated effort, this disease is on the brink of extinction, with only 14 human cases in 2023!  Adam Weiss, MPH, is the director of the Guinea Worm Eradication Program at the Carter Center. microTalk caught up with Adam at the ASM Microbe conference in Atlanta in a live session to discuss the imminent extinction of guinea worm disease. Weiss talks about how seeing the d ..read more

Antibiotic resistant bacteria are threatening modern society by making antibiotics obsolete. Dr. Nizet is a Professor and Vice Chair in the Department of Pediatrics at UCSD, as well as the faculty lead for the UCSD Collaborative to Halt Antibiotic-Resistant Microbes (CHARM). His laboratory studies how the human immune system interacts with microbial pathogens, with particular focus on antibiotic resistant bacteria and how to treat them. Dr. Nizet discusses how his training as a physician helps drive the research in his laboratory, how repurposing therapeutic drugs could help fight antimicrobia ..read more

Houston, we definitely do NOT have a problem…with interviewing Dr. Kate Rubins, NASA astronaut.  Dr. Rubins is a virologist who has spent over 300 days in space, performing experiments aboard the International Space Station, where she was the first person to sequence DNA in space. We caught up with Dr. Rubins at the Neutral Buoyancy Lab in Houston, where she discusses what it felt like the first time she saw the earth from space, some of the difficulties in performing research without gravity, how to study the microbiome of the ISS, how the international inhabitants of the ISS communicate ..read more

Dr. Hyun Jung Kim, an Assistant Professor at Case Western University specializes in coaxing human cultured cells to differentiate and form tissues resembling the gastrointestinal tract, in order to study microbe-GI interactions.  Dr. Kim discusses his surprising discovery of how common immortalized cultured cells can differentiate and form something that resembles a gut-on-a-chip, how these guts-on-a-chip can be used to study diseases like inflammatory bowel disease and colorectal cancer, how the addition of a microbiome to the gut-on-a-chip allows the bacteria to retain diversity unlike ..read more

Plague and anthrax are feared diseases due to high mortality rates following pulmonary exposure, and both are considered potential bioweapons.  Dr. Virginia Miller, professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and ASM President, studies plague, as well as other Gram negative bacteria. Dr. Theresa Koehler, emeritus professor at UTHealth Houston and ASM president-elect, is an expert in anthrax.  microTalk caught up with Dr. Miller and Dr. Koehler at ASM Microbe 2023 in Houston to discuss these biothreat agents. Dr. Miller discusses why she studies plague, the difference ..read more

Dr. John Coates, a professor at the University of California Berkeley specializes in environmental microbiology and how microbes can be utilized to resolve problems in industry.  microTalk caught up with Dr. Coates at the ASMicrobe conference in Houston and discussed his research in applied and environmental microbiology.  Dr. Coates discusses an unexpected discovery of how microbes drive the iodine cycle on earth, how sequencing microbes in the oceans has been beneficial for identifying novel biochemical activities, how climate change has stimulated his research into the “bioeconomy ..read more

The study of evolution has experienced a tremendous revolution with the advances in current sequencing technologies enabling e.g. rapid whole genome sequencing.  Dr. Vaughn Cooper, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh who studies evolution in microbes, has taken advantage of these technologies to delve into how microorganisms adapt and evolve in different environments. microTalk caught up with Dr. Cooper at the ASM Microbe conference in Houston and discussed microbial evolution with him.  Dr. Cooper discusses the power of next generation sequencing for the study of evolution ..read more

Malaria continues to have a significant impact on humans. The Plasmodium parasites are transmitted through mosquito bites, and the disease has a tremendous impact on global health. Dr. Debopam Chakrabarti, a professor at the University of Central Florida who specializes in malaria. Dr. Chakrabarti discusses the history of the search for antimalarials, the problem of parasite drug resistance, how undergraduates can help to discover the next antimalarials, whether eradication of mosquitoes will eliminate malaria, and his challenging passion in growing roses in Florida. This episode was supported ..read more

Exosomes are small vesicles that that facilitate communication between eukaryotic cells. They resemble mini-cells, and act like carrier pigeons, trafficking various “payloads” among cells. Dr. Ramin Hakami is a Professor of Microbiology at George Mason University. Dr. Hakami studies how infectious diseases are modulated by exosome signaling. Dr. Hakami talks about how exosomes can deliver messages to cells, how Rift Valley Fever and Plague affect exosome signaling within infected hosts, how exosomes provide specificity and a “reply all” function to signaling, how being in a Nobel lab affected ..read more

Coxiella burnettii causes Q Fever, a zoonotic disease that is rarely acquired by humans. But Q Fever has a history of being developed as a bioweapon because of its ability to be spread by aerosols and cause debilitating but not lethal disease.    Dr. Stacey Gilk is an Associate Professor at the University of Nebraska Medical Center who studies Coxiella.  Dr. Gilk talks about what makes Q Fever a potential biothreat agent, how figuring out how to grow Coxiella outside of cells revolutionized the study of this bacterium that was thought to only grow intracellularly, how a lar ..read more