Let's Talk Micro
147: Research in Medical Laboratory Science: moose, bears, ESBL, and more
[Music] Welcome to Let's Talk Micro! Hello, dear listeners! Welcome to another episode of Let's Talk Micro. As always, I hope your week has been going great. And you can always find Let's Talk Micro on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Amazon Music, Goodpot, whatever you listen to podcasts, you can find Let's Talk Micro. As far as social media, I am on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube as Let's Talk Micro, or next as Let's Talk Micro 1, or LinkedIn as Louise Plaza. And I have any more address, which is Let's Talk Micro at outlook.com. So either via social media or via email, you can send any feedback, any topic suggestions. They are always welcome and appreciated. So please go ahead and subscribe to the podcast, download episodes, and if the app allows you to do so, please go ahead and leave a review. Thank you so much for the support. And of course, if you are looking to learn more about antibiotics, please check out www.learnanibiotics.com and the Learn Antibiotics book available on Amazon. These resources include cheat sheets, practice test games, and more. And they are being used by thousands of people worldwide, and may be helpful for you or your colleagues. Great resources from Dr. Timothy Gautier. A very passionate pharmacist. So if you are listening to this episode by now, Microb 2024 has passed, and I tell you, you know, it was such a great event. So great presentations, great posters, you don't have a great time connecting with people. And stay tuned. There's a little episode that I recorded while I was there. Well, I actually talk about what I like, what I did, you know, posters and things like that. So stay tuned. If you haven't checked out the previous episode, please go ahead and do so. It was a great episode with Dr. Madeline Barron, and she's a communication specialist at the American Society for Microbiology. She was a guest of the podcast on a previous episode about microbes in your cleaning appliances and tools. So if you haven't checked out that episode, please go ahead and do so. But in the episode, Madeline talks about what causes UTIs, you know, what organisms are typically seen. She talks about some treatment options. She talks about what is a recurring UTI, which is short for urinary tract infections. So this was a great episode with some great information. So I'm definitely invite you to check it out, if you haven't already. Well, today's episode, I am going to be brief because it is longer than most. It is over an hour, but it is great content. So a few episodes ago, Grace Lubirk, she was a guest in the podcast and she is the director of the Medical Laboratory Sciences program at the University of Alaska in Anchorage. And she talked about her program. And one of the things she talked about was the research, the MLS students they do. So I invited her to the podcast to talk about this research in more detail, which is what this episode is about. And this type of research, this is something that I don't think most medical laboratory sciences programs are actually doing, but maybe you should consider it. She really breaks it down. You know, she talked about how did it got started. She talks about the testing they do, the samples, you know, includes like scat from bear, moose and geese. The organisms that they're finding, you know, what are they used to identify them? What kind of antimicrobials is the probability profiles? They're finding. And I think that one of the outcomes of this research is that the students are learning so much. You know, they are performing so much testing. They are coming with such good concepts and they are learning so much about antimicrobial resistance. So I think this is very positive and should definitely be considered for some other programs. You know, the students learn so much and also the value of research and getting involved in it. So I really like what Grace is doing. And one thing that she mentions in the episode is that, you know, that understanding that AMR is not something that, you know, it just happens in hospitals, but it's something that happens in the community. And there are so many factors to it. So definitely such a great episode. As you are listening to this episode, keep in mind that microp has passed. So we talked about Grace presenting in microp and that unfortunately passed already. But she is going to be presenting at the joint annual meeting, which is, you know, known as JAM. And this is a joint meeting that happens yearly with the American Society for Clinical Laboratory Science, ASLS, Association of Generic Genetic Technologies, AGT, and the Society of American Federal Medical Laboratory Scientist, S-A-F-M-L-S. So if you're attending JAM this year, which is going to be taking place in Pittsburgh, I definitely invite you to check out Grace's talk. And I am including the title of the talk and also a link to JAM registration on the show notes. So great episode, great content. Let's go ahead and listen to it. Recently here in the Let's Talk Micro podcast, we had a guest, Grace Luburg. She was in and she talked about her MLS program at the University of Alaska in Anchorage. And, you know, as she was describing the program, she touched on research that the students do, which is something that maybe those of you that have studied medical laboratory sciences, and I remember when I went to my program, we did like some sort of project, but like doing the type of research that she's talking about, we definitely did not do. So, and then we mentioned in the episode that at some other point in time, she was going to return and talk about the research in more detail. So here she is to talk about the research. Grace, welcome again to Let's Talk Micro. Oh, Louis, thanks again for inviting me here. I did listen to our first podcast together. It was so much fun and reminded me that I have to slow down. When I get excited about Micro, I tend to talk faster and faster. My students have learned that if I start talking really fast, and then if my hands start waving around, it's probably going to be on the test. I'm going to make a point to make sure I don't get too excited and talk too fast, because research is really the cornerstone of what we do in medical laboratory science. You know, when we look at the lab, if you have a visitor, even when anyone comes down there, they see a lot of instrumentation, a lot of people in white lab codes, and they don't necessarily see the critical thinking that's going on. And I remind my students that even when they're running a CAM profile and it goes through and everything checks out, you're really critically thinking. You're just doing it so almost automatically you're not. I mean, your QC work, your validations work, everything. You didn't have a Delta fail. You know, there wasn't an error code. And all of those things that you're looking for before you have that auto, even that auto release, I mean, you're monitoring that. That's all critical thinking. But because it looks so automated, I really wanted to bring that critical thinking in the education piece so that when they got out into the workplace, they would have that sense of embedded in them because they've done it in an area that maybe we can look at a research piece. We can break down what we actually do in the clinical lab in a more bench type situation. Of course, microbiology is the most common way we can do that, because even with the instrumentation molecular that's coming in, we are still very manual. There's still things that are there. There's always new bugs. And so there's a real good opportunity for research. So when I was hired by the University of Alaska Anchorage, one of the things they really wanted to do was to bring more research into the program. Prior to my hiring in 2016, you're right, they did things like projects. They actually had a departmental honors. And we still do program where one or two students may do a project with their clinical sites, and that was always there. They've always done a capstone project, but they really wanted something different, something to really increase those critical thinking. And I always smiled that it didn't come with any money. So it's not like I said, here's this pocket of money we want to do research. They said, "Grace, you've been doing outcome-based research the whole time on your bench." That's because when I interviewed, I talked about, "Oh my gosh, why am I doing all this testing? Should we do something better?" Or there was one weekend that I got really tired of having to recalibrate the lab-directed testing on all of the drug abuse that we're doing serum. And I noticed that every single time we'd run a serum in a urine, the urine's always positive. In other words, the serums, yeah, but the urine's always reprised. I'm like, "Why am I doing this?" So I did a research study on this because I got tired of doing those on Saturday afternoons. And not just because I was tired, I was always curious. So when I interviewed, they said, "Can you bring that to the university?" So it wasn't something that I already had. It's something that they wanted to see me develop. And notice, I sort of had this curiosity all throughout my education. So I guess they must have trusted me that I was going to be able to develop something. And I had some ideas. I had some ideas already when I was interviewed. So we came to UA, I came to Alaska, and I was teaching clinical microbiology and molecular diagnostics. Those are my courses. And I'm walking around, and I might have touched on this earlier. I can't remember, but I still remember passing this huge 14-inch circle of mousse scat. I mean, it's just covering half of the sidewalk. And everyone's just walking around. And mousse scat is like little, like pellets. They're like a very small egg, but they're a pellet size. But they're not like rabbit pellets. They're bigger than that. But they're very distinct. They're very hard. They're not soft and mushy, like you think dog scat, but they're very distinct. So people think that they're fine. I mean, you technically can pick them up and they're not slimy, not that I'd recommend that. But the consistency seems to be rather innocuous, right? So people would walk around them. And nobody seemed to care. And I kept thinking, and we're not talking like a single pile of piles and piles. And mousse do not like to stand in the snow. And so they figured out that in Alaska, in Anchorage, we plow. So when the snow comes in the mountains, they migrate down. And so they're everywhere. I mean, there's technically 1500 resident mousse in the Anchorage Bowl area. And so there's these piles. And I was like, this is crazy because I come from Kansas. You know, we are a rural state where you move your cattle from one field to another, is that happens? And if you, granted, you're not going to pick up every pile, but you have to kind of clean after your cattle. That's considered a health hazard if you don't. I mean, you can't just leave stuff anywhere you want willy nilly. And so it's sort of like, I couldn't believe everyone thought it was okay. So in the meantime, I was trying to think, what could I do that was sustainable in the research? So we don't have a lot of funding for research. I'm a bipartisan, which means I don't have a research component on my contract. So I'm teaching and doing service. So what can I do to have this dream that they have? Well, we get donated media from the hospitals. And because Alaska does not have just in time inventory, because obviously it's hard to get things up, we get quite a bit of outdated media. And I noticed that a lot of the outdated media, which makes sense is all for enteric pathogens, because you know, we're all collecting that macaque with sorbital, macaque, HE, XLD, plus XLD and HE are not hard auger to make, because we have, you know, we have the ability to make a petri plate. So there's not a hard plate to make. So I'm thinking, and I'm walking around all this moose scat and I'm like, huh, let's see maybe what grows. And so I had a handful of students. Winter break was coming and I could see it because it had snow and then you can see them in the piles. And then they're cold. I'm like, well, this is kind of good because I really didn't, you know, want to make sure my students are safe. And I thought, well, this will be okay. It's cold. It's on the snow. We'll put it in the black bags and we'll see what happens. And so that first winter break, we kind of played with it for lack of a better words because myself and three other students, and they collected moose. And we didn't have any, we're kind of like throwing against the walls deep at sticks. We really didn't have any idea what we were going to do with this. And then at the meantime, Gnome, one of the hospitals up in Gnome, Alaska had gotten some microscan plates and they were not able to use them for some reason. I can't remember if they were doing a lot number change or what the deal was. Well, again, shipping is so expensive, microscan didn't want them back, you know, because it's cost prohibitive for them. And what are they going to do with these hundreds of plates, hundreds of microscan plates? So they call UAA. And we paid for the shipping from Gnome to us. And so it's like Christmas, I couldn't believe it. I had all these microscan plates. And that's manual, right? And we could, and I had inoculators, I had everything ready because I had a compact too. But I didn't, it hadn't been used a lot. And I wasn't sure about and have a lot of cartridges at that time. But I had these. And so that's what we started out with. And we put it in some bio, we, you know, set up like a stool culture, put some stuff at room temperature. And then, you know, I try really hard to make sure that I'm using very clean language, but I could not believe what was growing. As a clinical microbiologist, I'm like, oh my gosh, I did not expect to see a potential ESBL Klebsiella coming from a moose sample that was just laying on the ground. And, you know, your Alaska, you're thinking, why would we have an ESBL producing? And in fact, when I saw, and of course, the microscan panels that we had were gram negatives for urine. So, you know, they're not going to have the great points that, but I knew from the susceptibility patterns on the cephalosporins, it was really suspicious. So I got a couple of, you know, the test, you know, cephalosporin, cephalosporin, you know, the clown alic acid, you know, the classic, you know, just diffusion method that we all learned. You have to remember ESBLs came on board when I was working. We did not recognize ESBLs until we had, I told students, we had in the clinical lab, it looked like it worked, you know, the cephalosporins looked like they were sensitive and they should work. And then, but then we had treatment failure. And one of my students says, well, what do you mean by treatment failure? And I go, well, unfortunately, people died. In other words, we were giving what we thought were sensitive, this is the 80s and 90s, you know, we did not know everything was just diffusion. We were doing some MICs. And we just didn't know what happened. And what we noticed is that we noticed that when you had the chain engine zone between the cephalosporin and the cephalosporin with the beta lactic inhibitor, so that classic difference in size, the reason that came about is we noticed that in our disdiffusion, we didn't do some great experience experiment to figure that out. It's just that we said, well, when the disdiffusion looks this way, then we have failure, clinical failure. It's almost almost a retrospective. And so that's why when we would do that, then we said, no, none of the beta lactums, because we just didn't know what was causing it, right? So having that background, I just did the same thing. I'm like, well, I think this looks like an ESBL, because the cephalosporin sensitivity. So let's go ahead and do it. And then sure enough, I got that, you know, the zones and the students, their eyes got all big and they go, what are we going to do? And I go, well, first of all, you're not playing with this yet, because I was really worried, because I, you know, I needed to tighten up our protocols, tighten up how we're going to, because prior to that, I just figured we'd get some, you know, E. coli and, you know, and maybe an enterbacter. And then no way that I thought a club sealer would come from a stool sample. Now, as you all know, fecal matter comes from what you eat. And moose eats sticks and, you know, branches and plants. And they don't eat meat. They're not a carnivore. So I wasn't surprised, we didn't see E. coli, but I didn't know what we would see. So that's how it started. And so I sat the students down and said, you know what, we're going to need to make a team. And we're going to need to do more of these. So instead of us working way too hard after class, we're just going to have advanced micro do it, because these spring semester is advanced micro. So I rapidly switched all my enteric pathogen fecal cultures that I normally were mocking up. And we just did these stool cultures. So we decided, we sat there and thought, well, let's just collect everything cold. We'll keep it cold, because it's cold. And then we'll thought out during that session, and we'll see what grows. Because we started thinking about what would that affect the patient ourselves? I mean, how is that going to interact? And so we started doing a lot of reading on environmental exposure, a lot of reading on transmission of bacteria from animals to humans. That's not something we really focus on in clinical micro. We always assume the bug is there in the human for close proximity, but we don't really think about zoonosis in that way, especially bacteria and colonization. So the three students and I worked really hard just trying to hurry up and figure out what to do, because we never expected that within a first week of culturing, we'd have these significant antimicrobial resistance. And I told our students, the students, I said, you know, not only is this really important interesting, it's really important, because I don't think anyone expects this. Everyone, I mean, people are making jewelry out of this stuff. I mean, this Muscat is something that's sort of a tourist thing. And, you know, we right away think this is not a tourist thing. And so we already started talking public health. And that's how it started. And we sat there that bought that spring semester and figured out a protocol, because I went online, you know, I did a literature review and nobody is culturing Muscat, you know, there isn't a protocol set up. So we, I told our students, we need to establish this now so that we can compare and we're going to do a surveillance. And so all of a sudden, this is going to be the research that UAA MLS students are going to do. This is what we're going to be known for. We're going to analyze this Muscat and see what happens. And so it started from there. But I didn't really expect that it would be such a significant finding. I really didn't. And mainly because it's organic, right? I mean, we're not feeding Mus antibiotic-laced bead, right? They're just hanging around because they don't want to stand in the snow. So that's how it started. Wow, that's fascinating. And so you said that they normally, so people do make jewelry, like they handle it like that? Yeah, they will like slack it and make it into earrings and stuff. So moving fast forward, you know, we've got a lot of data. So at this point, I don't have an exact number, you know, that first 2017, 2018, you know, some of that data didn't really know what we were doing, not that we were not being careful, but you know, that consistency that you need in research and have to recognize we were building our own protocols on our own. But I had done, I had presented at the One Health Conference in Fairbanks, and that would have been 2022, 23. Okay, so I can't remember what year it is. So 2023, we did. And it was great. It was an international conference that we actually spoke. And at that conference, the Alaska Beacon had, well, there was, you know, there was reporters and it was a very large conference. And it was international and online, so it was really great. It was really great. It happened to be in Fairbanks because we're the middle of Circumplers. So I told my students, they go like, well, how can it be exciting conference? It's in Fairbanks. I'm like, well, because guys were Circumplers, you know, we're the Arctic. That's why it's in Fairbanks. So it was lucky for us because we could travel to it. And it was a phenomenal conference. And we were picked up by the Alaska Beacon, and then we were interviewed. And then the newspeople interviewed us, the local Alaska. And that's where I finally got to say, please don't use it to make jewelry. And it was interesting to take the data that we have as scientists and talk about ESBL and carbonet paste producing and all those periods, it doesn't rattle off, right? And to make it so that the public is not scared to go outside because our data points that in the Anchorage Bowl area, which is about 30 square miles, is that 71 percent of any moose cat that you come across has one or more multi drug resistant organisms in it. 71 percent, no matter where in the Anchorage Bowl that you're walking or hiking. So I did not want people to be scared to go outside, you know, because it's still, I mean, you still have to have somewhat close proximity to be able to colonize yourself with bacteria. I think I'm more concerned about dogs because I'm always worried about when animals dig and they produce aerosols and they don't realize that you don't really breathe in that, but you'll swallow it. People don't realize that, you know, when you're digging and that you actually have particles that you do swallow, and that is one of the more common ways to become colonized. And so I do worry a little bit about our domesticated animals and they're digging and they're digging, of course, they're always going to after that moose cat pile because it smells wonderful to them. So that does concern me to some extent, but I still wanted them just to be aware. And one of the big things was don't make jewelry out of it. But the one thing we also discussed as a public health is that individuals were using it for composting because you think it's natural. And actually because they eat a lot of sticks and stuff, when you break apart that nugget, it's almost like this granular grainy, I mean, it's not soft. Again, it's very dry. And so it almost looks like something that would compost or they would mow over it. And I would say don't do that because when you do that, you're producing, first, if you mow over it, you're going to produce an aerosol, right? Because dust and that, and you could become colonized. And if you compost it, our concern, and that's what we're moving towards in this next couple of years, is that it will become part of the soil. Because not only have we picked up, not in moose, but we diverged to bear scat and geese scat, so we do more than moose scat. We started with moose scat because that was the first thing that I noticed, but we have diverged. And our bears scat, and during the pandemic, you know, bears became more in our populated areas because, you know, we were no longer there, you know, on the streets as much, they became more comfortable in the areas around humans. And we still have, they get in our garbage. We know we're very careful. Alaskans are very careful. We really know to be careful, but let's face it, bears are bears. And because of that, we have been concerned about E. coli O.1.5.7 chicken, toxin producing E. coli. And of course, we all know as microbiologists and bear scats, more like the traditional scat that you think of soft, mushy, and so it'll dissolve in the soil. And we have picked up O.1.5.7 from bear and scat that we found. And of course, we're concerned that once you use that for composting, it becomes part of your soil too. And so when it becomes part of your soil, there's always a potential could become part of your plant. And so that's another transmission. So, so one of the things with our moose scat, like I said, don't make jewelry. And they actually said don't compost it. You know, one of the things we recommend is that you just, you know, rake it up, bag it and toss it away. Don't treat it like a organic, natural, you know, very benign thing because it really isn't, it really isn't. So I want to, I want to talk a little bit about your, your procedures. So now you say that that's sort of so after the initial of research that you were doing, you know, did a procedure. And you know, we talk about media. So we're thinking about stool samples and we think about media, right, like Hector on XLD. So can you talk more about the procedure? So you get the samples, you played them, things like that? Sure. So our procedures, one of the things we wanted to be certain was that we were consistent, you know, it all starts with specimen collection, right? Specimen collection is the key. So we wanted to make sure that we were doing things consistently specimen collection. And then not only for environmental cultures, because we are environmental cultures, so we do not have IACUC, we're not integrating with the animals. This is not an animal project, it's an environmental project. So they're real strict guidelines in collecting their ground collected. They're not collected directly from the animal. And then where they're at, in the very beginning, you know, we were doing GPS coordinates because my students really liked that. And then we realized that that was really not important. It was more important for us was human, an animal, and soil interaction. So in other words, what pocket areas where we would have the highest impact where a human could come into contact with these piles. And so we also wanted to be able to do what's called citizen scientists. We wanted to have anybody collect if they wanted to. So that's why we moved away from some of the Kerry Blair collection kits, and actually went with the black bag. And when it came for stool samples for the moose, we want four nuggets, very specific four nuggets. Anything, if it's a geese sample, get as much as you can, because those geese samples are pretty small. And then for bear, about two tablespoons. And you know, we would take size because I once had, when they were collecting, I had a really conscientious faculty member that within our allied health, she wasn't med lab scientists, but she was in one of the other allied programs. And she wanted to make sure she got enough sample and she gave me this huge bag of bear scat. So I don't really need that much. So very specific with how much zip lock bag and keep it cool and out of direct sunlight. That's all we ask for. It's Alaska. So you know, not everybody's mom's going to let it put them in the refrigerator. So cool garage, you know, where it's no direct sunlight and that where it's going to get warm. And so and then try to bring it to the lab within 24 hours. And that's our goal. And so in the lab, we have a bucket that's in the refrigerator. And so they're placed in the refrigerator for our collection. We collect moose scat in the spring, and we collect moose scat in the fall. So we have two times of the year we collect. Part of that is for a one five shedding, because a one five sheds sometimes in the spring and sometimes in the fall. So we're always looking for a one five seven in moose. Not because we think they're going to start eating, you know, garbage, but because once we pick up a one five seven in the moose, then we know it's in the plant, right? That's our that's our direct. And when it comes to bear, same thing, we collect bear in the summer because they're hibernating the wintertime. I always tell my students be careful because if there's bear scat, there's bear. And so really be careful about that. So bear scat and get it kept cold. When I come, when I come back and check in August was all been collected, not only by me, but students and community, then we freeze them. So why we way freeze them is that we want to make it like the Alaska winter. So the scats on the ground, it gets frozen. So this is not an immediate interaction with it. But what happens when it's frozen? And then the following spring, so the following spring, our moose and bear scats frozen. We will thaw it and then we'll put some and carry Blair for our entire pathogens. Plus it helps us to maintain it. What is that? And then we just do a thiol broth 24 hours. We put about a pea size. It's hard to kind of measure. We just sort of, I actually do this part because I don't want the students to be dealing with potential aerosols. So I will inoculate all the thiol broth. And then they incubate for 12 hours. And then they subculture it to all the plates, including the enteric pathogens also. So we do enteric pathogens not only in the, when they risk the initial sample and carry Blair, but also a subculture. Because they kind of want to see what's there. You know, typically enteric pathogens happens when you field dress the moose or field dress the bear. And so that's where the highest concentration of ability to get sick from them or the meat gets contaminated. So we recognize that we're not getting true enteric pathogen data, because ideally we'd have rectal swabs or, you know, entrail swabs. So we get that. So we're just sort of looking to see what's there. What we think is important is that if there are potential enteric pathogens in the bowel, if someone would handle the fecal matter afterwards or be around it, you know, again, the risk for colonization and and that. So we recognize that some limitations with that is not a true, what we would consider research for enteric pathogens as a immediate slaughter position like you would in a slaughter house or a meat processing plant. So we recognize, because again, I don't, we don't want to be dealing with animals. We are dealing with environmental cultures, but we get some data that way. And then we set up right. Makonki, agar, XLD, HE, we will do a sugar tax and induction broth. We do Makonki with sorbitol. Then we also do room temperature for eucinia. So cian or eucinia agar, whatever we have. We also do a Makonki agar at room temperature. One of the reasons we do this is that we're coming up with some really interesting different gram negatives. And this is sort of evolved because, you know, I tell my students, I'm always looking for the potential for emerging pathogens. And there's always that where that bacteria is growing at room temperature or is available there in that soil sample, that water sample where close human contact. And so their potential to become colonized or infected with it. So I always tell students it's not a bad idea to do room temperature, but it's really great because they're unusual organisms. And so I don't know how to mock up an unusual organism. They get some unusual organisms. And so when actually we're looking at one, and I don't know how to pronounce it, so I'm not even going to try, but it's a soil water organism. But later on we've noticed that it's an actual potential pathogen that they're looking at as a contamination in the hospitals. But of course there's no AST. There's no antimicrobial susceptibility pattern yet because of course they haven't had enough. And we isolate it in about 20% of our samples. And so I told my students we're going to start doing an antimicrobial susceptibility pattern. We're going to start running it and see what our susceptibility patterns are, what our MSC break points are on this. And so to get that data, right, to have that so in case it would become a potential pathogen, we'd be like, hey, UA has been growing this. So that's what we also do. So we do that. And then of course, also campy. And we don't do campy-style. We just do campy-plate and look for campy. So we're looking for salmonella, shigella, your cinnia, E. coli 0157. And what we'll do is on any of the non-sobertal fermenters, which again, because these are animal fecal samples, we get non-sobertal fermenting and they're not E. coli. There's something else. So it's a really good experience for the students to know just because it's not sobertal fermenting. Remember, you know, the whole, that whole tree says you got to confirm that's E. coli, right? Well, they're like, oh, it's that E. coli. Because then they'll take that, that non-sobertal fermenting, they'll sub it to a split plate from a conky and sheep blood. Because I get tons of split plates from the hospital. And I think they set up urine on them. So I've got a maconky on one side. I got sheep blood on the other side. So they'll sub it to that. So we've got a nice ice-blade colony. And then they do the endol, and then they do the spot P-Y-R and they can identify E. coli just like that, which was great. Because then they'll see on the regular maconky it'll be lactose fermenting, right? So lactose fermenting on the regular e. coli, on the regular maconky split plate, they're doing the endol, they're doing the P-Y-R on the split plate. And then of course, non-sobertal fermenting on the maconky was sobertal and they go, oh, potential, you know, a 157. And then we do the latex. In that great, it's exactly what we do in the clinical lab. Very difficult to mock up. And the reason I have my advanced students do this and not that my 200 level is because they need to have good techniques. They need to know how to do an endol without worrying about, you know, they just need to make sure that we're using good laboratory techniques. And they know that they know that they could have potential of 157. So their their safety is right there. You can just tell the difference. I mean, they're always careful. My students are great. They really are good students. But when they know that they don't know what's in there, because I don't even know what's in there, that whole level of, I can't touch my face. I have to wash my hands. I have to make sure that I have everything clean on my counter that I can't cross contaminate is there. So that's what we'll do. And then, of course, if for the XLD or the HE, again, if you have a H2S producer and it's not fermenting, we go ahead and do TSI slants, right? We'll do a urease slant, urease positive or like, you know, no big deal, if urease negative, then we know that we potentially have a salmonella together. And so at that point, then we will sometimes we'll do an API strip, but more than likely, we will just do a presumptive ID if then we'll run the antimicrobial susceptibility testing on the biotech. Because I've got a lot of identification, but a lot of AST for the biotech. One of the hospitals were generous and donated a lot of them for us. So we're able to do that. That is really antimicrobial resistant. So in other words, I really want to have a good genus and species. You know, I'll figure what salmonella species I can put that in the biotech. It'll give me my my interpretation. And I'm like, whoa, we need to really identify this. Then we'll go back and we have still have micro scan panels that have the biochemical so we can do a better ID. If it's something that I get really concerned about, I freeze it. And when I get, I'll get API strips and we'll do that. So we're very much. But most things we can identify, because most things are, you know, a club's sealant and we do mortality. And it's all the basic biochemical. So the students will do all of that. So besides the entire pathogens, we identify any E. coli. If it's an 0157 or not an 0157, we will still do an antimicrobial susceptibility test. We'll do a disdiffusion burst because I want the students to do disdiffusion practice. We'll do a disdiffusion burst. Look for that potential ESBL. And then those that are highly resistant, we will run on and verify the biotech. And so we'll confirm with that. But they're really good at looking at those disdiffusions and say, oh, I have a potential ESBL. If they do, then they do the disdiffusion confirmation for ESBL. And so they do that. And so that makes it really good for the students because they are not just looking at the antimicrobial susceptibility testing results. They're already looking at those key Cephalosporins, those key, when the zones are less than this, that potential ESBL. It's already in the back of their head. So although I tell them the computer will tell them they need to know they need to be able to scan at those results and know what they have. So all the E. coli's then are identified, all of them. So they have learned to look at a mixed culture plate and pull out the lactose fermenter subculture, again, indoor positive PYR negative. Sometimes we get an indoor negative, PYR negative, realizing that there is about 5% of the E. coli's are indoor negative. So they get that too. So we always verify that. Was it was citrate and urease? Why not? Citrate and urease plants are easy to do. E. coli is very non-reactive, right? They're like chagelis. So it's really great. It really enforces some of those just spot biochemicals that you can verify. So they're not having to rely on a huge API strip or something. So we'll do that. And so when you think about it, takes two weeks to go through those cultures. Now for grand positives, so we've only done gram negatives and we started with gram negatives. And we did gram negatives for a couple of years, but I really wanted to do gram positives and a couple of students that were doing departmental honors. So they helped us to create that protocol. So what we do then, same thiol broth, but then we sub it to columbia auger. We just sub it to any chrome auger that we have. So we have chrome auger for like MRSA and VRE. So we'll put it to there. And then we will also do a sheet blood auger. And so and we'll do a makake just so that we have a feeling about how much normal flora is there with the gram negatives and gram positives. A little bit easier when you've got columbia for your gram positives and the makake for gram negatives. And we can make makake auger really easily. And so we start looking and we only care about staff, which we don't grow very often, which is amazing to me. I can't tell you how many cultures we've done and we don't really pick up staff. But we do pick up alpha hemolytic strep. And so we'll pick up the alpha hemolytic strep, biol echelon and salt, just like you do for enterococcus, anything as enterococcus positive, then we can do an id and sensitivity on the bytech. And then we will do that. And we're looking at vancomycin resistant enterococcus fecalis and piquium. We'll look at the zolid resistance. And then we also will see what else we see. So we get enterococcus glaryum, enterococcus calcium flavors. It's really good for the students to see that, that type of sensitivity pattern, the idea of intrinsic and acquired. And and it's okay. You know, we in the clinic lab, we're always so focused on, you know, vancomycin resistant enterococcus fecalis and piquium. But, you know, if you have a shared environment, there's an enterococcus glaryum or an enterococcus calcium flavors. And an individual becomes colonized with that because they are camping in an area of housing insecure. So they're camping and and shared environment. So they could be colonized with that type of an enterococcus. They could get a urinary tract infection and then subsequent sepsis because, you know, that's one of the number one ways we get sepsis is an uncontrolled urinary tract infection. And it could be an enterococcus calcium flavors. So for us to sort of think, oh, that's not a true pathogen. We don't see it. And we have to really remind ourselves that because we have environmental exposure, then we have environmental opportunity for colonization, then we become a reservoir for some of these organisms that we would consider unusual. And they probably still are, but to assume that we shouldn't be looking for them or doing research on them is why we still identify them. So even though they're not truly a pathogen, as we see, they're not something we look at in the clinical lab as far as surveillance. But it's something I think it's important. So the students, and it's great because they know they're alpha hemolytic straps. I mean, how many students, you know, graduating from med lab science program can just spread a lot, calcium flavors, you know, they just know it because they isolated. So we do that on all the all the isolates on both the moose, bear, and then the geese. Now the geese samples are handled a little bit differently because they're small, and we keep them fresh. So I don't know about you, but the geese seem to defecate on our entire parking lot. So these are our 200 level students. So to get into my 200 level students involved, they work on the geese samples. And so same thing, they collect them in ziploc bags, but after they collect and they bring up to lab, we go ahead and put them in a thiol broth, and then they also direct plate. So they'll direct plate to the enteric pathogens. We don't bother with the carry Blair, they're such small samples, but then they also incubate the thiol, and then the thiol they will do enteric pathogens again, and then the grant positive. And it's really good for them because not only does it work on that direct plating isolation, getting those individual isolated colonies, so really good learning. Geese is not nearly as dangerous. We do see some vancomyas resistant enterococcus fecalis and piquium, but not very often gets some, but we don't see the ESBLs as much. So I'm not as quite as concerned, but of course, we're watching. And this is about halfway through the program. So they've had a good section on lab. They've gone through their grant positives. They've gone through their grant negatives. And so this is like their first mixed cultures. That's what they're doing. So they'll set them up. But again, the same thing. We don't worry about at this point E. coli 0157 with the induction broth, because we don't get a lot, we have to purchase the induction broth. And so I kind of really do that for those organisms, those animals that we would actually eat, so the bear and the moose, we actually eat, we don't eat the geese. We do do the the macaque with sorbitol. So we do do that, but we don't do the induction broth. And on the moose and bear with the induction broth, if it is cloudy, we treat it just like you do an induction broth, and we just go ahead and do a, we subculture to make sure it's E. coli, and then we do an EIA method to see if it's the sugar toxin, if it's the veritaxin 102. So we actually do a latex on the broth, just like you went on a regular hospital induction broth procedure. So we do that. Does that, I mean, it's a lot, but, and then of course we look at our campy plates, but I will tell you we never grow campy, but I make the students do it. You know, it's always a good thing. I've yet to grow campy, even on all those geese samples. And I don't know, I know we've done at least 400 moose samples, but we probably have done at least that many geese because the geese is easier. We set up a lot, we've got a lot more samples, and we have never grown campylobacter. So just letting everybody out there know I've yet to isolate campylobacter, not for lack of trying. Yeah, and I think even in the, in the lab, I mean nowadays, it's, it's, we do mostly, you know, like most, most two cultures, you know, that have been replaced by molecular tests. And then if you get something positive, then you will go ahead, like for salmonella, you will play it or, or Shigella, things like that. But campy, yeah, campy sometimes it's, it's, it's hard to isolate in the, in the lab. It's, it has been difficult. So when we do get it typically nowadays, it's mostly, it's been detected on the molecular test. Um, wow, you know, listening to all that, you know, putting all the research aside and everything, they're getting so much knowledge and, and, and such a rich experience because, you know, that's, that's what my career is about by doing all those tests in biochemicals and looking at their cultures and solving them and looking at that morphology. That's how you build that knowledge. So they're, they're coming out with some really strong knowledge when they're, when they go into the workspace. I mean, that alone, it's just, it's great. And then I'm amazed how much my advanced students understand antimicrobial resistance. I mean, when we were before, you know, the first year I was here, you know, I did the traditional where you have some samples, you know, you get the little, you can get some, you know, organisms from the hospital, you know, some of the ATCC ones and, but this is different. And because we don't always know, and they see lots of sensitive stuff too, just like you do in the clinical lab, but their ability to talk about carbenepase, their ability to talk about ESBLs, as, as if they know it. And for that level of micro knowledge, especially antimicrobial susceptibility, is amazing because that, that's very difficult to teach. And I really admire microbiology, instructors, because I was struggling it with myself the first year. But the minute that they have these cultures, and it's right in front of them, maybe it's the relevance, maybe they know that this is part of research. So they know these are not mockups, they know that we don't know, I don't know, and they need to make certain that we're doing it correctly, because we are, they are part, they might not, their name may never be on a paper, but they know that their data, they're five, they'll do five moose cultures, that's a lot of mixed cultures that they're working on. And when they're done, they know that that information is going to go to this group. So that's what we, so because we're generating a lot of data, I decided to create a MLS, what I call research team, and everyone's eligible to be on the team as long as they're in the MLS program. And so it allowed maybe some of our 100 levels, the students are just getting started to start logging in, because it's a hybrid, so we are on campus, and then it's Zoom, linked at the same time. During the summer, it's all Zoom linked, because I spend a period of time back at our home in Kansas. We still own a house and land in Kansas, so we're reverse snowbirds for Alaska. When everyone's enjoying Alaska, we're in Kansas and they eat the way we are. But we meet at least every other week during the school year, depends on my schedule, the student schedule, and we talk about what we do. And the students at first, when they think it's a research team, they think they're going to do more lab work. And I'm like, no, no, research team is about data analysis, it's about literature review, it's about how our protocol's good, and it's a roundtable discussion. I had facilitated, of course, because I kind of want to guide the direction to some extent, but it's so much about what do you think this means? What do you think this printout is? We'll look at all of the biotech printouts, and this summer, they're on teams right now, we'll use Google, they'll like they're Google folders, and they're working in teams and starting to do a literature review on areas and trying to find out what's out there, what do they find environmentally, what is going on, how is it applying to us, where is our data going, where are we concerned about them. That's why we moved also to parasitology. So we actually, on our MOOS fair and geese, we do a, you know, that little EIA kit that you do for GR idea and cryptosporidium, and then we also do a modified acid fast on all our samples looking for cryptosporidium. We're identifying a lot of cryptosporidium that are, you know, your acid fast, modified acid fast that are not necessarily EIA positive. So that's a whole another topic. I've got a student that's looking into that, is that, you know, we assume that cryptosporidium parvum is the one that is causes infection, but is it the one that's causing infection because it's the only one that we're picking up? You know, isn't it possible that cryptosporidium that, again, we're talking about our housing and secure. I mean, this United States, our area, we have a lot of people that are living in areas where they do not have clean water, that they're living in shared environment with the environment, and how do we not know that individuals coming to the hospital with diarrhea and cramping that we're attributing to poor diet, maybe alcoholism, whatever, they're really got cryptosporidium, right? And it's just that we're not picking it up because we're not looking for it. So that's a side project that came about a couple years ago that I have a couple of students that were really looking at it, looking at our protocols, doing lots of modified, so my students can read a modified acid fast thing without a problem. I mean, that's something to be something to do one sad slide and everybody demonstrates it's another one to be doing 20 because they got to do 10 and they got to do two of them, right? Two slides per 10, and then they got to do one of their partners so that we have QC, that's how you do QC on those, right? Somebody else reads your slides, and so we're doing that, and so that's part of that process too, but so we recreated this team. Anyone can be part of it, and that's the team that does more of the writing, reading, presenting the conferences. So you don't have to do that, but you have to do the research data. One of the things that I always felt significant about is access to research, and so many individuals think that, especially students, think that if you want to do research, you've got to be that straight A student or that, you know, 3.8 GPA, and if you look at a lot of applications sometimes, two projects, even our departmental honors, requires a minimal GPA, and I tell my students, when I talk to them about being part of the research team, I tell them, first of all, you can drop in and drop out. It's not like once you commit to it, you have to commit the whole semester. I mean, you have lives, and then I would say, and there's that professor that's always giving you tests. You know, you have to, you know, continue to do well. So you just want to know what's going on. Just log in and listen, or just come. It's only when you get really interested and you maybe want to help lead a project that I ask for a little bit more time commitment, but up until that point, you can just log in and log off. And so a lot of my students that haven't even started the micro will start doing that. I have a student this summer that's doing that, and they start getting interested at the very beginning, and I had one student one year that decided to do that, and he was truly a BC student. Chris is a really great kid, but you know, some kids test better than others, right? And he did great, and he was a whiz when it came to looking at Excel files, and there was one day that he really wanted to lead the project on E. coli. And I said, you know, Chris, you're struggling in school, you know, you need to make sure that you're getting those grades. He says, yeah, but I want to do this. So winter break came, and I had all these Excel files on E. coli. We've been collecting random data on E. coli, and I hadn't done anything with it. And so I'd like, here, Chris, we have all this E. coli data, just if you're going to do anything or winter break, do it. Well, he did, and found that there was a significant trend in resistance from 2018 to 2021 on E. coli. This is trajectory. I couldn't believe it. He emailed me professors that we need to have a meeting, and so he showed me the data that he had. And I'm like, oh, my gosh, Chris. And he said, yeah, so we had, we got to get this together. And because of COVID and that the ASAP conference allowed a delay in sort of some of the abstracts, because normally, and I just, we have got to get this. So we worked hard, the two of us and then a sister was also a student. And so we brought a sister on board. I always like to have at least two students, and we wrote it up. And it wound up being one of the top winners in the ASAP conference that following October. And we submitted it under professional, not under undergraduate research, under professional guidelines, because it was so significant. Okay, so this is a kid that's a BC student. This is a kid that's an MLT graduate. Now, when are you going to see in a regular university setting, where someone that's a BC MLT that's going to submit an abstract to an ASCB conference, and what did it for him is that he could not believe that I have this value as a researcher. I go, yes, you do. I mean, research is not just lab. Research is what does this data mean? What does it look like? You could see the pattern. You saw the pattern. I didn't. I just gave you a bunch of Excel files. And that's what I want my students to come away with. That is what I want my program to be. And when you have that type of open access, then you have that. Anytime there's an application, and we still do departmental honors, there is a place for that in our program. This doesn't replace that at all. And often, my departmental honors students are ones that I really need them to do a little bit more work and lead on something because I really like the Cryptospritium, the original Enricakis, those were departmental honors students. And so, yes, they have a place. But to be able to have an opportunity for somebody that just is curious and can be part of this is when we start getting diversity. And we would never have had that. I would have never had that abstract, would have never gone. If this kid hadn't said, you know, I've been listening to this. I really think E. coli is cool. Can I do this? And I said, sure. And if he had to apply for that, that wouldn't have happened. And so, that's always my success story. And I've had a number of that. But this is what I think we need to be as an MLS program because now he's in that workplace. And you and I both know he's thinking, do I really need to run this test, right? Is there a better process? Can I do a better process? Can we maybe set up an LDT that's better than what we're doing now? Because he had that opportunity and was given that yes, right? We want to give our students that yes, you can do this. And when they don't realize they're not too scared to try, right? When we get in the workplace, it's scarier to try something new because now you've got bosses, you've got to, there's protocols, it's scary. But in a teaching environment, it's a little easier for me to tell that student yes, and they'll go for it because the level of error is, you know, the consequences are lower. So that's my story. That's a great one. And yeah, and then, you know, he's also going with those, you know, critical thinking skills, which are so important as part of what we do as medical lab scientists. And that's always great. And I think sometimes, you know, some texts are a little afraid of exercising that, but that's just, you know, it makes you better at what you do. And you're thinking, okay, maybe what can we do better here or there? And that's always at the end, you know, it just benefits, you know, your patients. So you mentioned, so as you were talking about some of your findings, you know, you mentioned that you'd recover like a ESBL, you talk about also a CRE. Maybe if you can talk a little bit more about the results that you had. So once we started, when Chris came up with that, I recognized that we needed to look at over a period of time resistance patterns. And two things happened as we were gaining more success in the clinic, you know, in our research, because again, I'm bipartisan. So I don't have time to write grants. I did get seed money from the ASAP. They had a grant for program directors. And so I was able to start the program with this. That's how we actually initiated, got some of our sugar toxin reagents that we don't get from the hospitals. And then the university, my department, really recognized the importance. So I really give a shout out to UAA, allied health, College of Health, my deans, my assistant deans, recognizing the importance of this, even our provost recognizes the importance of this. You know that it's important when the assistant dean of the College of Health is collecting, you know, caribou scat when they're out hiking in Denali. So you really know that when your assistant dean becomes a citizen scientist, that they have really bought into this really great thing that we're doing here. So we got a little funding, which helps. One of the biggest costs, believe it or not, is, well, we would understand as microbiologists, is biohazard, you know, removal. We generate a lot of plates, a lot of biohazard material. We have to be careful how we dispose it. So they were able to do that. What we were finding, and this is what our concerns are, is that when we also were able to get a software upgrade on our VITEC. So we had a VITEC Compact 2 that was put in, I think, 2012 and very manual, and had that had a software upgrade. I was working closely with our biomero, the kind of the technical support she comes up and visits, and she always comes to see us. She always says, I see your kids everywhere, you know, when she does Alaska. And so we were talking, and she says, you know, you probably need a software upgrade. And of course, that doesn't come free. And biomero had a, but they had a program. They were doing a software upgrade. And so we could be part of that program. So I went to the university, and we wrote a proposal for the department, and they funded that. And, you know, it was a good ten, fifteen thousand dollars between software upgrading. And we went ahead and did a PM that hadn't been done for a while, because I really was concerned about. So once we got that software upgrade, any sample that we had that I was really concerned about that looked like an ESBL on just diffusion, and what I could see on our micro scan, but I couldn't confirm it. We're not sequencing. I don't have any ability to look for any kind of gene sequence. I freeze. I'd have beads. I bought some beads and glycerol, so I freeze everything. So when we got the software upgrade over spring break, I thought, and I, you know, resub cultures of ESBL, sub-CLAs, half-neas, you know, bactors. And I ran up, and I was seeing the warnings from biotech, carbonapase, carbonapase, potential carbonapase, potential CTM, I mean, because it will give you that. And I went, "Oh, my goodness." And so we went back. And so what we saw is that in the very beginning, we had an ESBL and probably carbonapase producing Klebsiella from the very beginning. We started seeing a tina bactor, and I don't have my dad in front of us, but it grew over a period of time. And now since last year was the first year that we saw an E. coli that was ESBL, but also carbonapase producer. And again, you have to remember, we think of E. coli as a really common bacteria, but in animals, it's not necessarily. We still only isolate maybe 25 to 30 percent the most E. coli out of, out of moose, because again, the plants that they eat, they're not going to. So a lot of times, what I think of is when they're colonized with the E. coli, it's more of an environmental colonization and not exactly a food colonization. And so, but, you know, of course, bear eat garbage and that. So not surprisingly that our bears are coming up with more antimicrobial resistance. And in fact, when we do bear samples, it's the one time I actually will use the ESBL chromogor. So a little pricey for me, so we only reserve it for bears because we tend to get more antimicrobial resistant E. coli from bears. And I don't want to miss one. And because you could have a mix of E. coli with some of them being sensitive E. coli and other E. coli being, you know, obviously it could be an ESBL. So we do use chromogor for our bear samples and pick up, pick up that. But yeah, so now every classification, so we have a Citibacter, Apnea, Latino Bacter, Klebsiella, Enterabacter, and E. coli that are all a ESBL producer and a cover and a paste producer. So all of those six classifications of organisms we have isolated in at least one sample since 2018, but not until 2023 that we have where everybody got hit. So everything was positive. And when I say 23, we, so this spring, we did samples collected in 23. I remember all our samples are a year old. Remember the initial collection we collect in the spring? So like we've collected the spring of 24, they're going to be frozen over the winter months. And then in the spring of 25 is when we're going to thaw and run them. So our samples. So when I say 23 means that we identified them this coming spring, this last spring, because they were so just remember everything is like a year behind as far as collection dates. And that's one of the, I'm going to speak at ASM and that's what I'm going to discuss. So we don't have a real good confirmation, because of course we can't sequence, you know, ideally you would sequence these. So we do, there is a method where you can actually take a meropenem disc, and you can inoculate it with your, you know, your suspected carbona paste producing organism, and see that if it will actually basically turn it off on the meropenem disc, in other words, it hydrolyzes the meropenem. And then we take that disc and then put it on an E. coli that should be sensitive to everything. And then if it's resistant, then obviously we hydrolyzed the meropenem drug in that disc. When you think about it, really cool cause and effect. And so that's what we're using to make sure, even though everything is kind of like looks like a duck, acts like a duck, it probably is. So we do do that, and every one of them that the biotech flag as a potential theory did actually do that, where we could show that the meropenem was hydrolyzed, and that it was no longer able, even though it should have been nice sensitive disc on an E. coli, it didn't. It looked resistant, so there was no more antibiotic in that disc. And so we've done that. That's, we actually came up with that procedure. It was, we saw it online, I think ARUP labs, I can't remember where we saw it. We went ahead and did it, and you see it, they sure it worked, and validated it as best we could, and it's good. I mean, it kind of, we always say presumptive, cause we can't sequence. We always, I tell my students this is what we see, this is what we potentially see. We can't sequence these organisms, but we can say that we have a highly suspected, and because of that, again, potential for environment. We don't say where it comes from, we don't say that everyone's going to be colonized, we're just letting everybody know it's out there. And the one thing that we talk a lot about with our students, and with people that we visit with, is that we have to stop thinking of antimicrobial resistance as something that is just happening in the hospitals. It is an environmental action, and I think what's neat about our program is we're actually growing it. So we're taking samples that have been frozen, and then thawed. And sometimes the only thing that's growing is the antimicrobial resistant bacteria. So in other words, it's not a bunch of mixed flora, and we're isolating one or two colonies. It's three plus of this Klebsiella, and it's the only thing sliming off our plate. And that means that after winter, and that thaws, and it gets in a warm, moist environment, it's growing that, and that's what's concerning to me. And that's what, what we look at, we look at that potential. I do what I mentioned because I keep forgetting is that I wanted my students to be able to express this in a symposium, and not just things that our, that the research team is doing, but also students that maybe could only drop in and drop out, or they want to talk about, you know, a certain thing that they do. So we do a research symposium every January. It's the first weekend after school starts. So after Martin Luther King Day, you know, when I was starting that Tuesday, so that following Saturday, we actually have it, and it ties in with our advisory board meeting. So afterwards, then the advisory board meeting, after advisory board meeting, they can stay on and watch the symposium. It's usually about two hours in length, and the students present. I make nice invitations so that they can take them home to their parents at Christmas time or winter break, so they can put them on the refrigerator. I always say the moms want something on the refrigerator. They want to know what you guys are doing, and they present. And that's all student presentation. I often do an introduction, a little bit about where we're going with the program, and then the students do that. And we've had people log in from all over, because again, we're going to be known. And I will tell you, Louis, our biggest excitement is, is that just recently, one of our abstracts that we sent to a conference was published, because, you know, when you, our under-professional guidelines, they are published, and we were cited in a One Health Journal, just last, just this last February. I told my students, there we are, number four. And so, because they are saying, you know, there is a risk of E. coli resistance, right? And then they cite UAA, because UAA has been phenotypically growing it, and they cited our work that we do. And I thought that was really exciting for my students. Wow, nice. Congratulations. And, yeah, well, that abstract, if you can, I will love to look at it, if you can tell me where I can find it. Yeah, and that's the other thing, Louis. They always say, well, where are your papers? You know, and I tell my students, you know, we go to conferences because we keep discovering new stuff. You don't go to a conference with the same abstract, you know, you can't. I mean, we all know the rules. Anyone that's listening knows the rules of abstract submission, right? Never been published, never presented. And the fact that we do, usually, two abstracts every year to a conference, and we've been doing it since 2019, tells you how much new stuff we're getting. Well, there's two reasons. One, we just keep finding new stuff, and our techniques are good. And this, you know, we're constantly, this is not just a semester that the students have a project and they get great at the end. This is an ongoing 12-month program. I mean, we just, like I said, we just met yesterday. As we had a Zoom meeting yesterday, students got their Google Dries last night. They're working all this week, all summer. So there's a year-round process. But I just don't want to have time, you know, this last semester, you know, I'm by Parte, right? So I have 18 credits. I was teaching 18 credits and three lab sections, and it's not the problem of the university. It's difficult to get faculty up here. Our program is growing, and I have a hard time telling a student, "No, you can't be in our program." So I tend to teach a lot. That doesn't leave a lot of room for writing. And I also wanted to make sure that we had enough data. I have to recognize that we have to wait every year for another group of data, because even though, as a researcher, yeah, I would love to run lots of samples all at one, right? I'd love to be able to just do a bunch and just be in my lab and get a couple, you know, lab assistants and a couple students, and let's just crank our live data. But that's not what we do here. What we're doing is we are generating a culture of research within the university program. And because we do that, as a researcher, I have to be patient for the next group of advanced students to give me my next piece of data, because it is not only important. And that's why we do abstracts. That's why we get the word out. I want people to know about this, because we think it's really concerning. But it is also important to me that as a researcher, but as a instructor, that I'm still giving the things that are so positive in my students' critical thinking, understanding, and I don't want to, we're just going to have to wait. And so because of that, we're at a point now that statistically I can maybe say something. So for anyone listening going, when are we going to see Grace's paper is we're really hoping to start submitting stuff to journals this coming to One Health. We're going to try to submit something to One Health this coming fall semester. But it's not just lack of time, but also I do not want to put something out. And I tell my students that you want to put something out that stands, you know, you want to make certain that not only what you're saying is important, but that it's reproducible, it's valid, it's not just random error. You know, there is randomness. You know, when I first saw that ESBL, how did I not know that just wasn't random error? Because we have that. That's, I always say that's why I can't find my car keys, because that's the random error that occurs in our life, right? And so because randomness is there, we don't want to make a huge firestorm over something that may just be random error. So that's part of it too. So hopefully, now Granny, we all know how the publication process is, but my goal is by this time next year, Lewis, you'll say, and Grace just has their first periodical, their first article published with the students. But I will tell you that it doesn't take away from our students' excitement. You know, I think sometimes knowing that it's just not, that it's a true program project. In other words, its data has been created by people that are now working in the lab somewhere, Providence Hospital, Totsenboo, whatever, but they all know that when that paper hits, that one of their five moose samples are there. You know, one of their of the 300 of samples that we're going to talk about, they have their five is somewhere in there. And I think that's great. And I'm really proud of that. That is great. And you said that you're so, you'll be at Microbe this year in Atlanta. Do you know when, what day? And I feel bad. I should know that. And what I'll do, Lewis, I'll email it to you. So maybe you can, when you post this, you can say, because I, I would just got my confirmation for my hotel. And so I, you know, I'm like, oh, when am I actually going to be speaking? And I want to say it's Thursday off the top of my head, but because it's in the middle somewhere, but let me, I'll let you know, and I'll email it to you. And then you can, then go maybe when you post this, you can say that, you know, this is when I'll be speaking. Yes. And I will also be speaking at the ASCLS conference, their JAM conference, but I'll be talking about One Health. And I'm actually speaking. And that is on their Thursday. They just changed me because they had a, I was on Tuesday of that, day of that conference, but now it's on Thursday. And that's in July. That's July, like eight through the 14th or something like that. So I'll give you those dates. I'll make sure you have those on, I'll email them to you so that if you want to attach them, you can go ahead and do that. Wonderful. And for the listeners, yes, when, when you see this and stay tuned on social media, once I have the information, I will go ahead and release it, especially in if you're attending microbe and you want to stop by and, and, and, and, and meet Grace and listen and definitely so you can have that information. Well, you know, Grace, as we're coming to an end of the episode, I just wanted to ask you if there was anything else that you wanted to add for the audience? Again, like I, I tell my students, you know, your life should always be curious. I started this grad program late in my life because I was curious and I just wanted to know more, you know, than the salesman, molecular and micro. And the only reason this program and all this research started is because I was curious. And so I think in our lives, as we move forward in our lives, if we can always maintain that curiosity, then our life will always have avenues that will open up to us. And I think sometimes when our life can be hard and, you know, we, our economy isn't always great. Sometimes people sometimes feel like you get stuck. If you can keep a piece of curiosity there, it may actually open a window, open a door, open a direction that you might not have never considered before. Remember that I was 55 and drove across Canada. And if I can do that, you guys can do stuff too. So just keep yourself open to curiosity. And I think in everything, micro, especially micro is always curious. But in every part of your life, I think you'll always grow. Well said. And and as I said before, I can listen to you talk for hours and I love your passion and I love what you're doing. So thank you so much for taking the time to being less stuck micro. Yes. Thank you so much. And maybe later on, we're going to be doing our goal because we just had our meeting yesterday. So we're talking about our protocols. So we're going to try to do a hundred soil samples just looking for a 157 in some of our areas of our parks that have a lot of berries because we collect, you know, we do that. We collect berries and just, and that's also where our bear scat would more likely have been. And so maybe if I find something interesting, I'll let you know if you think you want to chat about that because, you know, that's, again, it's we're clinical microbiologists, but we forget that it all comes from the environment too. And so we have to cross those bridges. You know, we're just not silo microbiologists. We have to think what's coming in our pack door. So if you want to invite me on, you know me, I'll talk about anything. I'll talk micro every day. So thank you so much for inviting me. I really appreciate it. My pleasure and I will, I will take you on that. All right. Thank you. And that, my dear audience, it's the end of this episode. I hope you enjoy learning about the research that Grace Bloomberg is doing at the University of Alaskan Anchorage at their MLS program. I think it's definitely very unique, right? Very different from what other programs might be doing. And I really like it. The students are learning so much, getting so much knowledge and really getting a grasp of on antimicrobial resistance, which is such a dense topic. So as always, right? Continue bringing that passion to what you do. It's so important. You do such great work. And stay tuned. Great things come your way. And a little episode about AS Micro that I did, it's coming your way as well. So thank you for everything. Thank you for listening. I am so grateful. So as always, stay motivated, stay safe, and of course, continue talking, Micro. Until the next time. Bye. [BLANK_AUDIO]