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BETHANY -- Matthew Swearingen, assistant professor of biology, received a West Virginia Idea-Network for Biomedical Research pilot grant in the amount of $14,977 to employ Next Generation Sequencing technology to study catheter infections caused by bacterial biofilms.
Bacterial biofilms are heterogeneous communities of bacteria that adhere to surfaces and secrete a slime matrix composed of sugars, proteins and DNA, which helps to protect the bacteria from environmental stressors like desiccation, antibiotic attack and physical forces.
Swearingen noted the work for the study will commence this year, and the grant will provide Bethany students the opportunity to conduct impactful biomedical research, and the potential to work with major Universities in West Virginia.
"This grant solidifies a collaboration between myself and two major biomedical research collaborators -- Dr. Paul Stoodley at The Ohio State University (OSU), who is a globally renowned biofilm researcher and Dr. Joe Harrison at the University of Calgary (Canada), who is an expert in the field of high throughput nucleic acid sequencing techniques and bioinformatics," said Swearingen.
"The study will sequence the gene messages in bacterial cells that recently endured a fluid shear-stress event within a catheter model," said Swearingen. "Determining what genes are up- or down-regulated after a shear-stress event is essential to determining how biofilm microemboli respond to shear, and what implications detachment or shear stress-dependent gene expression could have downstream, particularly in the context of a chronic infection."
A 2007 graduate from Bethany in biology, Swearingen earned his doctorate in microbiology from Ohio State University where he conducted research on salmonella infection and cell-to-cell communication. Swearingen also completed a two-year postdoctoral training fellowship at OSU studying chronic biofilm infections in humans.