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Uncoiling the RNA of dysentery

By Nick Piotrowicz

Dysentery was once almost as common worldwide as the flu, especially during times of war. Although most dysentery outbreaks now occur in developing countries, the disease is far from eradicated in the industrialized world; for instance, more than 600 cases were reported in Franklin County, Ohio, last year alone.

A summer project conducted by Annick Edon, OMS III, could help find a cure.

As a part of the college’s Research and Scholarly Advancement Fellowship, Edon collaborated with Erin Murphy, Ph.D., assistant professor of biomedical sciences, to study the role of SraB, a small RNA in the bacteria Shigella dysenteriae, which causes dysentery.

Because SraB was recently predicted to occur in Escherichia coli bacteria, Murphy suspected it might also be at play in dysentery, which is related to E. coli. According to Murphy, Edon was the first person to confirm the production of SraB in S. dysenteriae.

“Next, the goal was to determine how SraB affects the (person or host organism) with Shigella,” Edon said. The team studied how this small RNA responded to different conditions. They tested its reaction to changes in temperature and in the concentration levels of both iron, which the bacteria need to grow, and dioxycholic acid, which alerts S. dysenteriae that it has entered the human body.

At the Empire State Medical Association’s 4th Annual Student Research Poster Competition, Edon won the grand-prize scholarship of $2,500. Edon has also presented her research findings at OU-COM’s Research Day last spring and the American Osteopathic Association Annual Convention and Scientific Seminar, held in New Orleans this past fall.

“This research has been an invaluable experience,” she says, adding that, as the whirlwind of the second-year board exam calms, she hopes to return to her research and submit her findings for publication.

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