Grace I. Borlee

Representation in the classroom and students’ ability to relate to scientists are essential for promoting engagement and success in STEM programs. Incorporating information about scientists from diverse backgrounds in the form of assignments increases student relatability to scientists and changes students’ views of who can be a scientist toward non-stereotypical identities. However, building new assignments in an already filled curriculum, and identifying scientists from marginalized backgrounds who specifically fit foundational topics in the General Microbiology classroom may be difficult. Here, we evaluated an intervention to increase representation in the classroom that can be easily incorporated during classroom time. We developed 15 short scientist highlights to accompany the content of a General Microbiology course. These highlights included scientists from historically marginalized backgrounds by gender, race/ethnicity, country of origin, and gender identity. Our main research question was to determine if this intervention could increase students’ ability to relate to scientists and increase their sense of belonging. We used a modified survey based on Schinske et al. (J. Schinske, M. Cardenas, and J. Kaliangara, CBE Life Sci Educ 14:ar35, 2015, https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.14-12-0231 ) and Estrada et al. (M. Estrada, A. Woodcock, P. R. Hernandez, and P. W. Schultz, J Educ Psychol 103:206–222, 2011, https://doi.org/10.1037/a0020743 ) to measure relatability to scientists and sense of belonging as a construct of students’ scientific identity. We demonstrate that showcasing scientists from marginalized backgrounds during lectures and without the need to incorporate related assignments can be a simple yet effective strategy to increase students’ ability to relate to scientists, while a sense of belonging appears to be a more complex construct with other factors to consider. Additionally, while all students were interested in learning about scientists’ contributions to science, those who identify as women were also interested in the scientists’ identities, especially when those identities reflected their own.

Science communication is a powerful tool for disseminating scientific concepts to both STEM and non-STEM audiences. However, undergraduate students are rarely presented with opportunities to practice this skill with non-STEM audiences in their STEM courses. Course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) allow students to engage in authentic research projects in the context of a structured course. CURE courses have been shown to increase numerous psychosocial benchmarks, including science identity and science self-efficacy. We describe the integration of intergenerational partnerships, in which undergraduate students enrolled in CURE courses were paired with older adult community members. We studied these partnerships within three different CUREs. Undergraduate students discussed their CURE research project and formed relationships with older adults from the community during biweekly meetings. As the semester progressed, undergraduate students self-reported gains in their ability to communicate science information to older adults and to the broader community, their understanding of their CURE research projects, and their science identity. Additionally, both science identity and science self-efficacy increased, while science value orientation had a negligible decrease. Here, we provide evidence that incorporating older adult community members can be easily adapted to other STEM classrooms or laboratory courses, providing a meaningful platform for undergraduate students to practice science communication.

Galbut virus (family Partitiviridae) infects Drosophila melanogaster and can be transmitted vertically from infected mothers or infected fathers with near perfect efficiency. This form of super-Mendelian inheritance should drive infection to 100% prevalence, and indeed, galbut virus is ubiquitous in wild D. melanogaster populations. However, on average, only about 60% of individual flies are infected. One possible explanation for this is that a subset of flies are resistant to infection. Although galbut virus-infected flies appear healthy, infection may be sufficiently costly to drive selection for resistant hosts, thereby decreasing overall prevalence. To test this hypothesis, we quantified a variety of fitness-related traits in galbut virus-infected flies from two lines from the Drosophila Genetic Reference Panel (DGRP). Galbut virus-infected flies had no difference in average lifespan and total offspring production compared to their uninfected counterparts. Galbut virus-infected DGRP-517 flies pupated and eclosed faster than their uninfected counterparts. Some galbut virus-infected flies exhibited altered sensitivity to viral, bacterial, and fungal pathogens. The microbiome composition of flies was not measurably perturbed by galbut virus infection. Differences in phenotype attributable to galbut virus infection varied as a function of fly sex and DGRP strain, and differences attributable to infection status were dwarfed by larger differences attributable to strain and sex. Thus, galbut virus infection does produce measurable phenotypic changes, with changes being minor, offsetting, and possibly net-negative.

Burkholderia pseudomallei is a saprophytic bacterium residing in the environment that switches to a pathogenic lifestyle during infection of a wide range of hosts. The environmental cues that serve as the stimulus to trigger this change are largely unknown.

Burkholderia pseudomallei (Bpm) is a Gram-negative bacterium and the causative agent of melioidosis. Despite advances in our understanding of the disease, Bpm poses a significant health risk, especially in endemic regions, where treatment requires prolonged antibiotic therapy. Even though the respiratory and percutaneous routes are well documented and considered the main ways to acquire the pathogen, the gastrointestinal tract is believed to be an underreported and underrecognized route of infection. In the present study, we describe the development of in vitro and in vivo models to study Bpm gastrointestinal infection. Further, we report that the Type 6 Secretion System (T6SS) and type 1 fimbriae are important virulence factors required for gastrointestinal infection. Using a human intestinal epithelial cell line and mouse primary intestinal epithelial cells (IECs), we demonstrated that Bpm adheres, invades, and forms multinucleated giant cells, ultimately leading to cell toxicity. We demonstrated that mannose-sensitive type 1 fimbria is involved in the initial adherence of Bpm to IECs, although the impact on full virulence was limited. Finally, we also showed that Bpm requires a functional T6SS for full virulence, bacterial dissemination, and for lethality in mice infected by the intragastric route. Overall, we showed that Bpm is an enteric pathogen, that type 1 fimbria is important for Bpm intestinal adherence and identify a new role for T6SS as a key virulence factor in gastrointestinal infection. These studies highlight the importance of gastrointestinal melioidosis as an understudied route of infection and open a new avenue for the pathogenesis of Bpm.