Dissertation
Pas de deux: environment & microbial communities - interactions, influence, & analysis
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Drexel University
Apr 2015
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17918/00001213
Abstract
Microbes are everywhere and yet remain mostly invisible to our understanding of how nature and the environment interact. Here, I present a set of studies which show how environment influences the makeup of microbial populations (or microbiome), and how they in turn influence their environment. I focus on two separate systems and questions - the first being - can I find an impact of the microbiome in a physiological disease unrelated to inflammatory bowel diseases (IBDs). To accomplish this, I characterized the microbiome of the human gastrointestinal (GI) tract from multiple people with Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS) and showed that it differs significantly from the microbiome found in healthy individuals. I next widened my scope and tried to identify how environment and history influenced the basic nucleotide architecture of microbes. This is important as such factors are the underpinnings of what is possible in the evolution of amino acid and proteins. I characterized the nucleotide composition of the ten major phyla found across 14 different environments (in each of which there were between 1 and 111 samples). I found that nucleotide composition correlated across phylum by environment and by sample. This implies that both phylogeny and environment influence nucleotide composition beyond the selection of specific function. This is related to a current project where I describe what environmental determinants could influence microbial nucleotide composition. Some preliminary results indicate that it may be a nucleotide arms race with the microbial infecting phages. For the present, my research has shown that in studying the evolution of microbes (and living systems in general) the influence of the environment is much more deep-seated than previously considered. This has implications both for bioinformatic methodological applications, but more importantly for our general understanding of how and at what (time) scale selection works in evolution.
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Details
- Title
- Pas de deux
- Creators
- Erin Renée Reichenberger
- Contributors
- Uri Hershberg (Advisor) - Drexel University, School of Biomedical Engineering, Science, and Health Systems
- Awarding Institution
- Drexel University
- Degree Awarded
- Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)
- Publisher
- Drexel University; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
- Number of pages
- xii, 130 pages
- Resource Type
- Dissertation
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- School of Biomedical Engineering, Science, and Health Systems (1997-2026); Drexel University
- Other Identifier
- 6505; 991018931815004721