Presenter: Zoë Wong
Faculty Mentor: Karen Guillemin, Tiffani Jones
Presentation Type: Oral
Primary Research Area: Science
Major: Biology, Psychology
Gastric adenocarcinoma, or stomach cancer, is responsible for the second highest number of cancer-related mortalities. Infection with Helicobacter pylori, a human pathogen, is the strongest risk factor and results in clinical responses that vary from no symptoms, to ulcers, to gastric cancer. One major determinant of disease expression is the presence of a bacterial virulence factor, CagA. Transgenic Drosophila that express the CagA gene were generated in the Guillemin laboratory and can be used to genetically disentangle H. pylori infection from cagA expression. A simple microbial community, short generation time, easily manipulated genome, and the ability to be raised germ-free make Drosophila an ideal model organism.
The goal of my research is to determine the effect of dysbiotic, or altered microbiota of CagA transgenic flies. The dysbiotic microbial community of CagA transgenic flies consists of Lactobacillus brevis and Acetobacter pomoroum. To address this, I reared control and CagA lines germ-free. I inoculated flies with either L. brevis, A. pomorum, or the combined CagA community. Adult flies were dissected after 7 days and gut contents were plated to quantify the abundance of each strain within the gut. Overall, CagA transgenic flies harbored a greater amount of total microbes within their gut, and interestingly flies that received the combined CagA community showed an increased total abundance of microbes regardless of fly genotype.