Research by a University of Missouri graduate student has been highlighted in the ALN online science magazine, www.alnmag.com.
Susheel Busi, MS, doctoral candidate in the university’s Molecular Pathogenesis and Therapeutics program, presented the study during the Cancer and Immunology Symposium at the Allied Genetics Conference in Orlando, Florida. The conference was a joint meeting of the Genetics Society of America and International Mammalian Genome Society.
The investigation by Busi and his research partners, Aaron Ericsson, DVM, and Elizabeth Bryda, MS, PhD, further explored the possible relationship between cancer and the gut microbiota, which is the collection of all the gut bacteria that animals and people have living in their digestive tract. He studied how the gut bacteria in a rat model of colon cancer correlates with susceptibility to colon cancer.
Busi’s study bolsters the growing body of evidence that the complex mix of microorganisms found in gut microbiota could influence a human's likelihood of developing colon cancer. This study was supported by the MU Rat Resource and Research Center, headed by Bryda, and a faculty research grant awarded to Assistant Professor James Amos-Landgraf, PhD, of the College of Veterinary Medicine. Amos-Landgraf, who is Busi’s faculty mentor, developed the rat model of colon cancer.
The Molecular Pathogenesis and Therapeutics curriculum is a joint graduate program of the veterinary college’s Department of Veterinary Pathobiology and the School of Medicine’s Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology.