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The Sci-Files is hosted by Mari Dowling and Dimitri Joseph. Together they highlight the importance of science, especially student research at Michigan State University.
Welcome to the Sci Files, an Impact 89 FM series that explores student research here at Michigan State University. We're your co hosts, Marty Dowling.
Dimitri Joseph:And Dimitri Joseph.
Mari Dowling:Next, we have Rose Quitan Lundquist with us. Hi, Rose. Thank you for joining us. Could you tell us a little
Rose Kithan Lundquist:bit about what your research is? Yes. I am, studying apple food microbiomes. And so I am looking at how the microbiota these are the community of microorganisms living in a particular environment. And from my study, it's apple fruit and how these organisms are changing over time during both side of storage.
Rose Kithan Lundquist:And I'm also looking at how the immune response of the apple fruit impacts the microbiota composition and the health of the apple food.
Dimitri Joseph:Very cool research. What is the immune response like in an apple?
Rose Kithan Lundquist:Right? Yeah. A lot of people, when I say apple fruit as immune response, they're like, what? So they get so surprised. So, yeah, we found out that apple fruit that is already detached from the apple plant has an immune response.
Rose Kithan Lundquist:So they have this innate immunity and this innate immunity, they found out that it can recruit beneficial microbes in order to maintain a healthy microbiome. So I wanted to look at if apple fruit has that innate immunity as well. And we found that that apple fruit has innate immunity and this innate immunity collapses over time. And so my hypothesis is that this innate immunity collapsing over time has an impact on the microbiota and also the health of the apple.
Dimitri Joseph:When I think of innate immunity, I think of the human's innate immunity, and I think of the skin. Is the apple skin that innate immunity that collapses over time, or are you referring to something else?
Rose Kithan Lundquist:Right. Yeah. So innate immunity, it's like the human innate immunity, except that this innate immunity is in the apple cell. It don't just have to be on the skin but on, like, all over the apple. Apple is made of cells.
Rose Kithan Lundquist:Right? So the cells in the plasma membrane, they have these receptors. It's called receptor genes. And then these receptor genes, when they recognize microbes pamtetraglut triggered immunity. It's also called PTI.
Rose Kithan Lundquist:And this is the innate immunity, and this is the first line of defense. And after that, there are so many things happening, but that's the first line of defense. I'm saying that in a very simplified form.
Dimitri Joseph:Yeah. Yeah. In order for me to understand that.
Dimitri Joseph:So I I thank
Mari Dowling:you. It's a good explanation. And what are some of the bacteria that comprise the microbiome, good or bad, of an apple?
Rose Kithan Lundquist:Good question. I looked at both fungi and also bacteria. And in bacteria, there are all these well known, like, people call it, goryl microbiota. So those are present in most of the plants like Pseudomonas, Fingominas, and Metellobacterium, and all of this. Or Enralstonia.
Rose Kithan Lundquist:Well known plant bacterias are there. And also among fungi, you would see fungi like Alternaria and spiropolomyces. And Alternaria is a well known, well studied pathogen fungi that causes rot. And so this Alternaria, the relative abundance increases over time and you see them a lot in, rotten apple fruit, but you don't see them so much in a healthy apple fruit. Okay.
Mari Dowling:Interesting. So when an apple starts to, quote unquote, go bad and starts to turn mushy
Rose Kithan Lundquist:or brown, that's because of the innate immunity of the apple going down and there's increased prevalence of these microbiomes? So that's my hypothesis. And so this is just, like, the beginning of, the research. This is where we are finding out that, yes, apple has innate immunity and it collapses over time, and also the microbiome is changing over time. So that's my hypothesis that innate immunity has an impact on the microbiota, and also the microbiota has an impact on the immunity.
Rose Kithan Lundquist:And they are cross talking to each other. And that one is the cause and the consequences. It's like they need each other to have a healthy apple fruit. And so this opens up a lot of different research in the future where we can study what these microbes are doing for the health of the fruit. And, also, we can study on inducing the immune response of the apple fruit and see how does that change the microbiome and health.
Rose Kithan Lundquist:And so it opens a lot of doors with the research that I
Mari Dowling:am doing. Yeah. So it sounds like you're not just looking at harmful bacteria, but also possibly helpful bacterias.
Rose Kithan Lundquist:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right now, I am looking at everything. What's in there?
Rose Kithan Lundquist:Like, both beneficial, harmful, pathogenic, opportunistic, everything that's in there. Like, what's what's in there? What kind of microbes in there that I am looking at? But then the next step would be, like, screening which are the beneficial ones and which are the harmful and opportunistic ones. So that will be the next step.
Mari Dowling:Has there been research done before classifying or looking at what kind of bacteria are on the apple?
Rose Kithan Lundquist:Yeah. Using amplicon sequencing, just identifying what's in there. That they have been done, like, but in a different research, in a different settings, quite different from mine. But so far, nobody new step. Yeah.
Rose Kithan Lundquist:Sounds like a cool project. Yeah. So a very interesting next new step.
Mari Dowling:Yeah. Sounds like a cool project. Yeah.
Dimitri Joseph:This may not be under your expertise, but do you have any tips on maintaining apples?
Rose Kithan Lundquist:From my experience, I would say that don't keep it in high humidity because high humidity, it's good for the better term. So it's like
Dimitri Joseph:you you
Rose Kithan Lundquist:don't wanna keep them in a humidity, you know, direct sunlight. So keep it in, like, shade, and don't keep
Mari Dowling:it wet. Yeah. I actually honestly never really even thought about the apples going bad as being a result of the microbiota of the apple. So it's really interesting to hear, and I hope we get to learn more in the future. Yeah.
Mari Dowling:Thank you very much. Thank you.
Dimitri Joseph:Thank you.
Mari Dowling:Next, we have Ifani Chuku Eke here with us to discuss his research. Thank you for joining us today. Could you tell us a little bit about what your research is?
Dimitri Joseph:Oh, yes. So I'm a here, PhD candidate in the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics. Recently, we got rebranded as microbiology, genetics, and immunology. My research is on drug discovery for tuberculosis. So my PI, Robert Abramovich, we are big on drug discovery for tuberculosis, how to shorten the treatment regimen, how to discover more effective drugs that can be used to treat tuberculosis.
Dimitri Joseph:You just mentioned a very interesting reason for your research, which is that the current treatment duration for mycobacterium tuberculosis is very long. Could you just give us some information about how long the treatment process is for for TB?
Dimitri Joseph:So, it depends on the type of TB you are diagnosed with. So, most times for normal TB, it takes a minimum of 6 months 6 months. To treat. But if you have what we call multi drug resistant tuberculosis, in that case, that is tuberculosis resistant to 2 first line drugs that are used in treating tuberculosis. So these 2 first line drugs are asoniazine and rifampicin.
Dimitri Joseph:In that case, you need minimum of 2 years to treat tuberculosis. Then we have the extra, one that can even take a a longer time to treat. So it depends on the kind of tuberculosis that you have depending on the resistance.
Mari Dowling:Compared to the current regimen that's prescribed for TB, what are some of the findings that you've had in terms of new potential drugs that might work against they
Dimitri Joseph:take a long time to work. That's why we had that 6 months. I've been they take a long time to work. That's why we had that 6 months minimum for their efficacy to be seen. So one of the things that we are trying to do in our lab is to shorten the treatment regimen from 6 months to 3 months.
Dimitri Joseph:One of the things that drive that long treatment duration for tuberculosis is because when mycobacterium tuberculosis affects the human host, it mostly affect the macrophages, the macrophages in the lung. And there in the lung, one of the ways the body tends to fight against it is to form what we call a glomerular. A glomerular is a protective lesion that encapsulates the pathogenic bacteria, preventing it from disseminating to different regions of the body. So that's like a double a sword. One, it enables it prevents the bacteria from affecting all the organs of the body, but that also makes it very hard to treat the bacteria because most drugs are unable to penetrate that protective lesion.
Dimitri Joseph:So we are looking at the way to specifically target m t b inside that current loma. So that's one of the things, we have actually discovered in our work. We have been able to show that how some of our compounds are able to kill MGP inside its dormant state. So inside that glioma, it tends to form a dormant state. So we are able to show that our compound is able to queue macrophathromic tuberculosis in this dormant
Dimitri Joseph:stage. So from what I'm hearing, one of the unique things about TB is that it's consumed by macrophages or alveolar macrophages and then the body tries to protect against it. Yeah. So this is protective reaction that encases the tuberculosis cells, and you found a way of penetrating this protective case?
Dimitri Joseph:Basically, in that protective case in the lung, MTD tends to go into a strictly aerobic organism. It needs oxygen for survival. Strictly aerobic organism. It needs oxygen for survival. But inside that protective case, there's low Okay?
Dimitri Joseph:And one of the ways m tb 3 reacts to the low oxygen is to form a dormant state. That's what we call a non replicating persistent state dormant state. So that dormant state is characterized by minimal replication, minimal transcription, minimal cell metabolic activities. So nothing much is happening there is akin to the bacteria sleeping. Most drugs in the market target a metabolic activity.
Dimitri Joseph:For example, which is one of the first nine drugs for treating tuberculosis, targets my colleague acid synthesis. So my colleague acid is a major cell wall component of macropathyroid tuberculosis. So it mostly targets synthesis, and with that, it kills the bacteria. Another drug targets transcription, and that's how it's able to kill. Now if the bacteria is sleeping and is not undergoing some of this metabolic activity, those strokes that take those those metabolic activities are useless.
Dimitri Joseph:So what we have been able to show is that not necessarily penetrating. We have not reached that level of chitung and loma penetration, but we we have been able to show that our compound can cure dormant NTB that is normally found in the glioma. So we are yet to show glioma penetration, but we are able to show it can cure dormant antibody.
Dimitri Joseph:Well, thank you, Ify, for letting us know or making us more aware that you and your team have identified a drug that can target mycobacterium tuberculosis in its dormant state, which most drugs do not currently do.
Dimitri Joseph:Thank you so much. And thank you so much for having me here.
Mari Dowling:Next, we have Simon Sanchez with us to his research. Hi, Simon. Thank you for joining us. Would you give us an intro of what your research entails?
Simon Sanchez:Yeah. Thank you for having me. So my research entails using insects to detect cancer. And the way you can think about this is the way we use dogs to detect bombs or to detect drugs. Dogs can also be trained to detect cancer.
Simon Sanchez:But the problem with dogs is that we rely on their behavioral response. So that behavioral response is a yes or no. And there's a lot of information that's happening in the brain that's being processed that we really don't take advantage when we just rely on the animal's behavior. So by using a different animal model, such as insects, we can really record from those brain signals and use those break signals as a template that will allow us to classify an unknown order that can be associated with cancer or other diseases and a healthy model.
Mari Dowling:That sounds like a really cool approach to detecting cancer.
Dimitri Joseph:Mhmm.
Mari Dowling:Are there specific types of cancer that you're looking at?
Simon Sanchez:Yes. So we have a oral cancer paper that has been published. We also work with lung cancer currently, and we also work with breast cancer. So there's various types of cancers that we can work with in detecting using this type
Dimitri Joseph:of platform.
Dimitri Joseph:Before we go any further, I I just like to know a little bit more about you and your training. Which department are you within? How long have you been studying this work for?
Simon Sanchez:Yes. I started in fall of 2020. I've been here for 4 years. I am currently just graduated in 2025. And I really started, you know, I'm in the biomedical engineering program, specifically with a neural engineering focus.
Simon Sanchez:And so we really use that combination of neuroscience and engineering for this type of research.
Dimitri Joseph:Cool. So so that that gives me a little bit of a better understanding of how you do your work. From what you just said, you're engineering these insects to specifically, you're engineering their neurocircuitry to reveal to you whether they're detecting cancer or not?
Simon Sanchez:So we don't exactly need to engineer the sensor. The sensor is the insect. The innate innate affection abilities, the sensors already made for us. The sensors, insects, kind of like how the sensor is a dog. Yeah, we're just taking advantage of recording from the brain signals.
Simon Sanchez:So we can record from the brain as they get exposed to volatiles that are being emitted from these cancer or healthy models. And we can send those volatiles to the insect antenna, which is analogous to our nose and then record from the brain and just take the neuroactivity and and do some computational techniques to really decipher what that neuroactivity is telling them.
Dimitri Joseph:Just for a bit of clarification, are you training the insects to recognize this volatile cancer molecules? Or is it that you're learning what the insect reads and reading that neural program and or pattern to then associate with that with cancer detection?
Simon Sanchez:Yeah. So we don't need to train the insect at all. The insects, like all animals, have a really strong powerful sense of smell. They can smell really low concentrations of volatiles, and they can smell it over a range of environmental conditions. So it doesn't really matter what the environment is, you know, dogs can go and smell in any type of environment.
Simon Sanchez:We just need to harness that brain signals. We just need to understand what those brain signals are telling us and what the patterns is when they're smelling a cancer cell versus telling, smelling a non cancer cell.
Dimitri Joseph:That brings the next question. What is the molecule that you're using to represent as cancer?
Simon Sanchez:It's a variety of what we call volatile organic compounds, VOCs for short. So these VOCs are emitted from cancer cells, or they can be found in our human breath. They can be found in urine, sweat, other biological fluids. And studies have shown that these volatiles exist at different concentrations for cancer populations versus a healthy population. So it gives lead way to, like, a non invasive diagnostic tool.
Simon Sanchez:The issue is that with engineered sensors, with sensors that are like breathalyzer, they can't really detect low concentrations or concentrations in a different environments. You know, it can work in a lab setting, maybe not in a clinical setting. But with animals, since they have that powerful sense of smell, they can really smell those all below volatiles
Dimitri Joseph:and those those different concentrations
Simon Sanchez:in different environments. You know, they are called voluntary compounds, and there's a variety of them. And we can just take advantage of that variety of complex mixtures.
Mari Dowling:My question is, is there a specific insect that you're looking at? And how did you figure out that this insect responds to cancer cells?
Simon Sanchez:In terms of olfaction research, just understanding how we smell, locusts have been used for a couple of decades now, and just understanding of how animals smell. Locusts is analogous to a grasshopper. They're the same species, but a grasshopper is solitary and locusts exist in a social colony. That's why you hear about the swarm of locusts destroying the crops. So they're they're the same species.
Simon Sanchez:They just exist in different social states. We can think of the locusts as just grasshoppers, and that's what we use in our research. We also use honeybees in our research. So honeybees also have a great sense of smell. They're not as widely established as a model in olfaction research, but we've shown that they can also be used for cancer detection.
Dimitri Joseph:Are there any other projects that you do that you found during your 5 years in BME?
Simon Sanchez:I also do other extracurricular activities such as participate in a nonprofit organisation called nucleate. Michigan is student run by students at MSU and University of Michigan, where we really try to help students turn that academic bench related research into some type of venture that can be biotechnology or life science focused to hopefully get that research from the bench side to more of the clinic. So that's also what I work on.
Dimitri Joseph:Cool. That that sounds like a great way to translate, yeah, like you said, research into a real world application.
Rose Kithan Lundquist:I think it's cool that both
Mari Dowling:in your research and your other extracurriculars and activities that this is something that you're clearly passionate about is making that translation between lab science and real applicable science. So thank you for your time. It was really interesting.
Simon Sanchez:Thank you for having me.