Microbiologist in food science, E. coli Reference Center gets grant for research

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — A Penn State microbiologist and the huge collection of bacteria he oversees recently received a four-year, $371,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to be part of a multi-institutional $2.5 million research project aimed at predicting “bacteriophage” resistance from only a genome sequence.

The E. coli Reference Center is housed in the Food Science Department within the College of Agricultural Sciences and includes about 95,000 bacteria samples. With more than 6,200 of its samples genome sequenced, the center is likely the only publicly available collection in the country that could have been leveraged for this particular project, according to Ed Dudley, professor of food science and director of the center.

A bacteriophage is a type of virus that infects bacteria, Dudley explained. In fact, the word "bacteriophage" literally means "bacteria eater," because bacteriophages destroy their host cells. A bacteriophage attaches itself to a susceptible bacterium and infects the host cell. Following infection, the bacteriophage hijacks the bacterium’s cellular machinery to prevent it from producing bacterial components and instead forces the cell to produce viral components. 

So-called phage therapy is seen as a possible weapon against multi-drug-resistant strains of many bacteria, Dudley pointed out, adding that phages have been used since the early-to-mid 20th century as an alternative to antibiotics in the former Soviet Union and Central Europe.

“Phage therapy research was active in the U.S. in the early 20th century, as well as the former Soviet Union,” Dudley said. “The discovery of penicillin and other antibiotics caused U.S. researchers to shift focus. Now that antibiotic resistance is becoming a global crisis, the U.S. and many others are ‘rediscovering’ phage therapy … Science is sometimes driven by rediscovery rather than discovery.”

This project demonstrates the unique research enabled by large bacterial culture collections, such as the Penn State E. coli Reference Center, that also contain so many genome-sequenced strains, Dudley believes.

The Penn State E. coli Reference Center was started by Dr. Paul Glanz in the College of Agricultural Sciences in 1960 and is comprised of isolates collected over six decades from livestock, wildlife, pets and food. The collection even includes E coli isolates taken from blue whales, Dudley noted.

The University of California-Berkeley and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories also are involved in the research project.