Home Department: Biology
Mentor: Alfred Spormann, Civil & Environmental Engineering and Chemical Engineering

Sulfate-reducing bacteria (SRB) have previously been associated with certain metabolic diseases of the human gut. SRB have been thoroughly catalogued from environmental settings, but despite ongoing research studying the health implications of SRB on the human gut, little is known about these human-specific bacteria communities. Rebecca’s research aims to better characterize these communities by using molecular biology techniques to identify sulfate-reducing bacteria species from fecal DNA samples, thus broadening and detailing our understanding of the sulfate-reducing bacteria community profile.