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The home stretch
It is incredible how three years have gone by so fast. As I draw closer to the end, I reflect with gratitude on all the lessons, connections and experiences that have come about during my Ph.D. journey.
I am ESR 14 and I continue to work on the relationship between diet-gut microbiome and pathogens in Lepidoptera species. Broad questions arise about the role of the gut microbiome in insects. Numerous publications have reported their functions in digestion, growth and development, metabolism, nutritional supplementation as well as immune protection. For the past year, I have been busy trying to understand whether the gut microbiome provides protection against pathogens or vice versa. During this period, I have spent time in the lab carrying out large bioassays with a variety of pathogens such as baculoviruses and entomopathogenic bacteria such as Serratia marcescens and Pseudomonas entomophila. In addition, it has been an exciting time learning new ‘omics approaches such as Dual-RNA sequencing and transcriptomic data analysis. We have obtained impressive data pointing towards the protective role of the gut microbiome against pathogens; however, this is highly dependent on host species, the pathogen and the composition of the gut microbiome.
This summer, I have had the privilege to present my work in two fantastic conferences. One of them was the CNRS-Jacques Monod conference on insects as models for infection biology held in Roscoff, France. This conference stood out for me because some of the presentations made included decades worth of work from leading international scientists and this made me appreciate the time and dedication put in to answer some of science’s most pressing questions. I also just recently attended the Society for Invertebrate Pathology (SIP) conference held in College Park, Maryland where I received an award for the best oral presentation for my talk titled “Diet dependent virulence effects of gut symbionts: The symbiosis of Enterobacter cloacae and Plutella xylostella”. In both of these conferences, I had great opportunities to network with other scientists and make what I believe will be long-term connections.
On this home stretch, I focus on finishing the little that is left of lab work, writing up my thesis and finally becoming an insectdoctor, before the next exciting adventures in science.
For more updates on my work, find me on LinkedIn and twitter (now X) @LorettaMugo