Laura Cook’s minireview was published in the July edition of the society’s “Infection and Immunity” journal. This was the first time the editorial board used an issue to highlight some of the “brightest early-career scientists who embody the future of research on host-microbe interaction.”

The piece, titled “Two-Component Signal Transduction Systems in the Human Pathogen Streptococcus agalactiae,” was co-authored by Lamar S. Thomas, a doctoral candidate in Cook’s lab.

“We only had two months to put together the review, citing 100 different sources, so it was a lot of reading and work,” says Cook, an assistant professor of biological sciences who joined the Binghamton faculty in fall 2018. “I wanted Lamar to help me because it’s good for her career. I was impressed with how much work she put into it, considering the short timelines.”

Cook’s research focuses on Streptococcus pyogenes, a bacteria that causes strep throat and skin and soft tissue diseases like impetigo and cellulitis. She also studies Streptococcus agalactiae, which commonly live in the gastrointestinal and genital tracts but can cause invasive infection in newborns, maternal women and older individuals with underlying chronic conditions.

“It’s not ideal that the only and best course of treatment is antibiotics,” Cook says. “We’re working toward identifying new treatment strategies. We hope our research moves in the direction of identifying new vaccine candidates.”

Cook did her undergraduate and graduate work at the University of Minnesota. Her post-doctoral studies took her to the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she focused on quorum sensing (the ability to detect and respond to cell population density by gene regulation) in streptococci and the role of cell-to-cell signaling as they colonize the host.

While working in the lab of Michael Federle, she began using animal models of bacterial growth, and her use of a mouse model of vaginal colonization developed into her current research.

Cook, Thomas and several undergraduate students are studying how streptococci grow and interact on mucosal surfaces in the vaginal tract and nasopharynx of mouse models.

Federle said he appreciated Cook’s coordination of his group of bacteriologists with a group with physicians at another university, both of which were researching reoccurring strep throat diagnoses among adolescent patients. The two groups were looking at relevant questions that could be asked in a clinical setting and were researching therapeutic options outside of antibiotics.

“She was really good at finding collaborators and teams of scientists that can work together,” Federle says. “That’s one of the biggest impacts that she’s going to have at Binghamton University.”

Another strength is Cook’s approachability and innate ability to make people — especially students — comfortable. “She’s a good person to collaborate with because she takes on big goals and ideas and she takes them on with ease,” Federle says. “She asks the right questions — questions that are going to need collaboration through interdisciplinary work.”

A gift from the Dr. G. Clifford & Florence B. Decker Foundation will enable Binghamton University biologists and their colleagues to conduct tests and research that will improve health outcomes for patients in Southern Tier hospitals with conditions ranging from ear infections to cancer.

The Foundation’s donation of $333,901 enabled the University to purchase a fluorescence-activated cell sorter. This key piece of equipment, typically used in cellular biology and microbiology research, will help establish the Health Sciences Core Facility, a multi-user laboratory open to campus researchers and their partners in healthcare and industry, especially those at Lourdes and UHS Hospitals.

“The Health Sciences Core Facility will strengthen collaborations between our faculty members and community researchers from Lourdes, UHS and elsewhere,” Binghamton University President Harvey Stenger said. “They will be able to discuss their findings and share their expertise and data. Our Analytical and Diagnostics Laboratory has been a successful model for laboratory research. Many of our partners treat it as a virtual extension of their own research and development infrastructure. We hope this new facility will fill a similar niche for research in the health sciences.”

One initial focus for research conducted at the Health Sciences Core Facility will be biofilms, which are implicated in 80 percent of infectious diseases. Biofilms — communities of bacteria in self-produced slime — pose a major challenge in healthcare because of their extraordinary resistance to antibiotics.

“A cell sorter will enable us to tackle the problem of biofilm resistance by allowing us to separate resistant and virulent bacteria from the general population and determine what genetic and regulatory mechanisms these bacteria use to survive and grow within the host,” said David Davies, an associate professor of biological sciences at Binghamton.

The fluorescence-activated cell sorter allows researchers to separate a mixture or population of cells into subpopulations. For example, it can sift cancer cells from healthy cells or separate disease-causing bacteria from harmless ones. The machine does not kill cells during the process, which will allow researchers to study viable subpopulations of cells. Using other tools in the same laboratory at the University’s Innovative Technologies Center on Murray Hill Road in Vestal, researchers will be able to determine the proteins that these subpopulations produce or identify mutations using DNA sequencing.

The Decker Foundation is one of the University’s largest lifetime donors. Speaking on behalf of the Decker Foundation board, Executive Director Gerald Putman said the foundation is pleased to provide this gift to Binghamton University and support its plans to become a premier public university of the 21st century. “This purchase will help advance important research,” Putman said. “The cell sorter puts the campus in the company of an elite peer group and also increases its impact on community healthcare, one of our Foundation’s key goals.”