Chelsea Diana Boyd

Chelsea Diana Boyd, Microbiology and Immunology (George O’Toole),  was one of the four 2010 poster session winners.

Boyd Poster Session Summary:

To persist, bacteria must both sense and respond to changing nutrient concentrations, antimicrobials, temperature, osmolarity, and signals from nearby organisms. Environmental cues, such as changing nutrient concentrations are sensed by planktonic bacteria and may trigger their transition to surface-attached bacterial communities, or biofilms. Fully understanding how bacteria attach to, and detach from a surface is imperative, because biofilms can form on surfaces in medical and industrial facilities.  In order for the environmental pseudomonad, Pseudomonas fluorescens to form a biofilm, the large-adhesion protein, LapA must be expressed at the cell surface. My research focuses on understanding how changes in environmental signals regulate biofilm formation by controlling the localization of the LapA adhesion at the cell surface. My long-term research goal is to better understand how biofilms form, and eventually learn how to control the impact of these communities.