Congratulations to Alexis Kirkendall, PhD candidate in the Microbiology Program, for passing her comprehensive exam!! The exam involved writing a research proposal on a topic outside of her main focus, and presenting her idea for an hour to her faculty committee, who then asked detailed questions about her work and understanding of this research for almost two hours.

Over the next two or three years, her dissertation research will focus on culturing bacteria that we previously isolated from mice consuming a steamed broccoli sprout diet, to test their capacity to grow amongst the gut pathogen Helicobacter pylori and produce the anti-inflammatory sulforphane under different conditions, as well as which bacteria produce sulforaphane in the gut, how they do it, and under which circumstances. It complements the collective lab research on how broccoli sprouts and gut microbes can be used to resolve Inflammatory Bowel Disease.

Congratulations to Lola Holcomb, PhD candidate in the Graduate School for Biomedical Sciences and Engineering program, for winning a graduate student research award from the Bioscience Association of Maine!!

Over the next few months, she’ll focus on characterizing candidate anti-inflammatory bacterial species and genes of the gut microbiome, using whole genome sequence data from bacteria we previously isolated during a broccoli sprout diet study. This is part of Lola’s larger PhD project investigating which bacteria produce sulforphane in the gut, how they do it, and under which circumstances. It complements the collective lab research on how broccoli sprouts and gut microbes can be used to resolve Inflammatory Bowel Disease.

Congratulations to Alexis Kirkendall, PhD student in the Microbiology Program, for winning a graduate student research award from the Bioscience Association of Maine!!

Over the next year, she’ll focus on culturing bacteria that we previously isolated from mice consuming a steamed broccoli sprout diet, to test their capacity to grow amongst the gut pathogen Helicobacter pylori and produce the anti-inflammatory sulforphane under different conditions. This will be part of Alexis’ larger PhD project investigating which bacteria produce sulforaphane in the gut, how they do it, and under which circumstances. It complements the collective lab research on how broccoli sprouts and gut microbes can be used to resolve Inflammatory Bowel Disease.