MbShea@PWP@English@UMCP

ABSTRACT: Each year, approximately 500,000 people worldwide die to Group A Streptococcus infections. Even in a world of modern medicine, no vaccine has yet been produced, and with antibiotic resistance on the rise, if nothing changes, these numbers will just continue to climb. As a result, the McIver lab is examining genes linked to increased virulence in GAS, so that we might find vaccination targets, or better understand the spontaneous evolution of virulent GAS strains from previously placid colonies. In specific, I aim to characterize the CpsY gene, which has shown an effect on GAS virulence in humans, but is not yet well understood. In order to better understand CpsY impacts, I plan to create stably fluorescent GAS, with and without mutated forms of CpsY, and will use microscopy, fluorescently activated cell sorting, and single-cell interaction to identify major differences through the course of human neutrophil killing of the GAS. This will enable us to directly pinpoint the effect of CpsY on GAS virulence and cell function. At this point, I have created the stably fluorescent GAS, and must test the growth in ideal conditions to wild type to ensure that the placement or activity of the fluorescent gene or genes does not significantly impact the normal functioning of wild type and CpsY strains of GAS. This research will continue to grow, and produce results that can influence how doctors treat or interact with GAS infections in the future.
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Reader’s Response: 500,000 people is a lot, but how close to home? Is that evenly spread out- should I be worried? Probably not… But the antibiotic resistance issue is a rising concern.. What I don’t understand about this is why this is focused on just CpsY? I certainly see the point of studying GAS, but why not characterize multiple genes, rather than just this one? That’s an issue, for sure. Even so, fluorescence is cool… wait. How does that help? Glowing GAS, great, why do I care? Maybe I should read a bit more, to see how they end up reconciling fluorescence and CpsY characterization.. Yeah, I’ll do that.

IMRAD, right?

In your A or D section, can you discuss reconciling fluorescent and CpsY characterization? Is this possible in one paper or is this a larger challenge for the field? Direct them to other discussion?