Hi, my name is Troy Michael King Jr. I was born in New Orleans, Louisiana and raised in Powder Springs, Georgia. I went to college at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, Oklahoma and graduated with a Dual Degree in Biochemistry and Microbiology in the Spring of 2016.

My interest in science began as early as elementary school but more particularly during my 12^th grade Biology class where my teacher presented science as a fascinating prospect filled with vast mysteries within our genetic code and the organisms we interacted with.

During my first year at Oklahoma State, I wanted more exposure to science. While researching careers, I found that upper-tier careers in science required an education beyond a bachelor’s. From my ambition to conduct research, I was allotted my first opportunity by a graduate student when I expressed interest in aiding him with his project. This experience further rooted my admiration of science and I continued to grow and evolve over my additional research opportunities.

My current interests involve the study of host-pathogen interactions. I am particularly interested in understanding the mechanisms pathogens possess to evade host immune responses and develop infection.

When looking at long-term prospects, I envision myself as a research professor at an institution where I can mentor students to pursue higher education. Research, to me, is an outlet for my creativity and wonder. A research professor possesses responsibility and integrity in their lab and towards students in their classroom and I plan to become a role model that possesses a fire in my teaching to incite my passion towards others.

I joined PREP because I wanted an opportunity to conduct research in an infectious disease lab where I can explore host-pathogen interactions. Additionally, I wanted to obtain additional laboratory and critical thinking skills that would prepare me for future graduate studies.

PREP@UGA has been a program that focuses on my desire to grow in my writing and oral communication. I love PREP@UGA’s connection with the department of Infectious Diseases because this is the field that most fascinates me. Through PREP@UGA, I have resources such as an Individual Development Plan and presentation feedback forms which aligns with my goal to become further adept in science and achieve my goal to be a principal investigator.

There are several elements I plan to receive from my time in PREP@UGA. First, I hope to increase my scientific literacy to be able to express my ideas to a broad range of individuals. Second, I plan to build a strong foundation for becoming a disciplined and passionate scientist so that I can motivate others to consider a career in an exciting field of science. Lastly, I want to increase my confidence to be an independent component of a lab to be able to form ideas from my experiments that exhibit advancement in the field.

My faculty mentor is Dr. Eric Harvill, and two of his postdocs, Dr. Holly Vuong and Dr. Illiasou Hamidou Soumana, are my research mentors. Together we are addressing questions on the interactions of pathogens and commensal bacteria.

My project is to understand the role of the respiratory microbiota in protecting the host against an invading pathogen. We have two Bordetella species that produce very different results in how they interact with the host microbiota, even though they are genetically very closely related to each other. Bordetella bronchiseptica and Bordetella pertussis. Dr. Harvill’s lab has shown that while B. pertussis, the human pathogen, cannot easily invade into a mouse unless the mouse was given high amounts of the pathogen, B. bronchiseptica very easily infects mice with very low amounts. It appears that B. bronchiseptica can disrupt the nasal microbiota and occupy the nasal cavity, and still be the primary culturable bacteria even after 70 days of the initial infection! I hypothesize that host specificity by Bordetella species can affect their disruption ability and colonization rates in hosts. Because we have such a good mouse model with this, my work will focus on how B. bronchiseptica displaces the nasal microbiota. But to get to the larger picture first, we need to carry out simple, clearly defined competitive experiments in culture to study their interactions and understand the mechanisms behind the disruption before we can move to the actual mouse host

My approach to answering this question involves breaking down the composition of the mouse nasal cavity using 16S rRNA sequencing to identify potential candidates for interaction with Bronchiseptica. I will identify the specific conditions to study clearing in culture. I will also strengthen the growth assay to determine important genes for this clearing mechanism by using mutant RB50 strains that lacks the clearing mechanism mice. In order to further test implications of pertussis clearing of human microbiota, I will manipulate mouse microbiota to acquire the appropriate conditions to test pertussis colonization strategy.

The Harvill Lab has been supportive in helping me develop and expand upon my ideas and the collaborative setting is crucial for my development.

My name is Troy M. King Jr. and I am a PREP@UGA scholar.