Aimee Moise (ENGELWARD & ERDMAN LABS)

Effects of Probiotics on DNA Damage-Induced Cancer and Mutations

Exposure to DNA damaging agents substantially increases the risk of cancer by inducing potentially carcinogenic mutations. Probiotics have been demonstrated to suppress tumorigenesis in animals predisposed to cancer. While there are in vitro studies suggesting that probiotics may suppress mutations and genotoxicity, there are few studies that examine these properties in vivo. We have used two mouse models to examine the impact of probiotics on mutations and cancer induced by a DNA damaging agent under various exposure paradigms.

Richard Wu (MANALIS LAB)

Synchronized Profiling of Single Cell Biomass, Molecular Crowding and Composition

Proliferating cells achieve fitness through the coordination of various independent regulatory processes such as DNA replication and cell cycle. The regulation of biomass, molecular crowding level, and biomass composition (i.e. relative abundance of protein and lipid) are seemingly orthogonal processes but tightly orchestrated together to achieve optimal growth and fitness in a nutrient-rich environment. However, the coordination of these fundamental properties is less understood in dynamic environmental contexts such as immune activation and ex-vivo drug response due to a lack of high throughput measurement techniques. Here we introduce a single-cell method that allows synchronized profiling of these properties with >100x improvement on throughput compared to existing techniques.