Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Commons^™

Microbial Innovations For Disease Management In Honey Bees, Brendan A. Daisley

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Arguably the most important insect pollinator, honey bees (Apis mellifera) are threatened by infectious disease, pesticide exposure, and nutritional deficits resulting from habitat loss.

The major goals of this thesis were to advance our understanding of the immune and microbiota factors underpinning synergistic interactions between the threats, and to develop a honey bee-specific probiotic with strain-level functions to alleviate cumulative stress burden.

Drosophila melanogaster was used as a high-throughput discovery platform in molecularly characterizing the effects of candidate probiotic lactobacilli and neonicotinoid-neuroimmune-microbiota mechanisms prior to experimentation in honey bees. Imd pathway activation by lactobacilli was identified to be …

Clinical And Mechanistic Insights Into Novel Probiotic Functions And Formulations, Jordan Bisanz

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Using a combination of hypothesis and discovery based approaches, the goal of this thesis was to better describe novel probiotic functions and their mechanisms while striving to better understand the effect of formulation on Bifidobacterium animalis subsp. lactis, Lactobacillus paracasei and L. rhamnosus.

Using RNA-Seq, a bacterial metatranscriptome analysis of a commonly consumed probiotic yogurt showed that the organisms adapted to storage time and flavor additions. This led to the discovery that in addition to the probiotic health benefits, members of the L. casei group (L. rhamnosus and L. paracasei) produce volatile sulfur compounds mediated by a novel …