Lauren Atkinson Receives Fellowship from NASA CT Space Grant Consortium

2017 Aug 4

Lauren Atkinson '19, a Biology major at Eastern Connecticut State University from Harwinton, is one of six undergraduate students across Connecticut to receive a summer research fellowship from the NASA Connecticut Space Grant Consortium (CTSGC). Atkinson is using the fellowship to support her research titled "Evaluating the Scorpion Microbiome for Diversity and Antibiotic Production."

Atkinson and Biology Professor Barbara Murdoch are researching the scorpion abdominal microbiome in pursuit of finding new antibiotics to address the rising threat of antimicrobial resistance. A microbiome is the collection of microbes or microorganisms that inhabit an environment - in this case, the abdomen of a scorpion - and antimicrobial resistance is the ability of a microbe to resist drugs (like antibiotics) that had previously been useful in treating them.

"The United Nations has declared antimicrobial resistance a fundamental global threat to human life, food production, economic development and security," said Atkinson. "One step in responding to this threat is to develop new drugs that microbes have not developed resistance to."

Scorpions are routinely exposed to potentially deadly microbes since many of their prey are vectors for deadly pathogens. "We are testing bacteria naturally found in the abdomens of scorpions for their ability to produce antibiotics," said Atkinson. "We hypothesize that scorpions have formed symbiotic relationships with bacteria that produce antibiotics that protect the scorpions from these pathogens."

"The discovery of new antibiotics would benefit the medical community and space exploration," writes the CTSCG, "seeing as antibiotic resistance increases under microgravity and human immune systems weaken during missions."

Atkinson and Murdoch began this research in fall 2016 and will continue into the fall 2017 semester. "Formulating my own research question and developing a way to test it has been a challenging but exciting learning experience," said Atkinson. "The funding that the NASA Connecticut Space Grant Consortium has generously awarded allows us to conduct more extensive testing - such as genetic analyses - that we otherwise could not afford."

NASA Connecticut Space Grant Consortium (CTSGC) is a federally mandated grant, internship and scholarship program that is funded as a part of NASA Education. There are Space Grant Consortia in all 50 states, plus Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico. Eligible full-time undergraduate/graduate students of a consortium university/college may apply for the fellowship program, in which students are expected to work on research related to space/aerospace science or engineering under the guidance of a faculty member or a mentor from industry.