“Imaging-Based Approaches for Investigating Microbial Communities”, Prof. Raghu Parthasarathy, Phydsics
Our group explores the physical properties of biological systems, especially bacterial communities, with approaches based on microscopy and computational image analysis. Most of our investigations focus on the gut microbiome – vast numbers of microbes that together act as a virtual organ, influencing a variety of physiological functions. For conventional organs, physical structure and dynamics are clearly linked to function – hearts beat, lungs inflate, etc. For the gut microbiome, we do not understand the role of physical structure and dynamics, motivating much of our work.
Our REU student will focus on one of the following: (i) characterizing through live imaging and image analysis the swimming behavior of microbes, especially to infer bacterial navigation strategies; or (ii) examining the structure and organization of multi-species bacterial communities, especially the role of and aggregation and the impact of perturbations such as antibiotics.