Sprague, his adviser Frank Steiner, and research partners conduct their research in a Strosacker lab.
Courtesy | Mark Sprague
Senior Mark Sprague recently conducted his own research: “Surface Effects on Staphylococcus aureus Biofilm Formation” using a dynamic flow growth model. Sprague did this on campus last summer for six weeks.
Can you describe your research?
Biofilm is essentially a collection of bacteria that layer on top of each other and grow in a unique way, different from just single cells. They form a “super community” which helps them survive. In the healthcare community, bacterial infections often manifest in this way. They form in these layers that are harder to treat when they’re in a biofilm, and thus more deadly. The bacteria we used in the experiment was Staphylococcus, the bacteria that makes up MRSA. In the lab, there are two ways to grow biofilms, batch models and dynamic models. In the past at Hillsdale, we’ve used only batch models, which means “stagnant conditions.” With a batch model, everything you grow the biofilm with is put in a well at once, and it grows that way. My experiment used a dynamic model, something that had not been used at Hillsdale before. A dynamic model involves nutrients constantly being put in and filtered out. The advantage of this is that it is believed to be more similar to the environment inside of a human, where conditions are always changing, not constant, and entering and leaving the systems. The machine we used to imitate this was a drip flow reactor, which grew biofilms on slides called “coupons.” The coupons can come in different surfaces made of different materials as opposed to batch models. This way, we could grow biofilms on different materials and see how the surface affects how the biofilm grows. We then used a confocal microscope to view the research, which can create really high-definition images of the biofilm.
What was the objective of your research?
This project was brainstormed by myself and Dr. Steiner, my research adviser. He had used the batch models in the past, and we really wanted to introduce a new form of growing biofilms at Hillsdale, so we saw this as a “pilot” kind of experiment. We wanted to see if the model was worth the time, and what its advantages and disadvantages were. It was a very microscaled project, but is going to aid and guide future research projects here that can build off what I discovered with my success of growing the biofilms with the dynamic model.
How has Hillsdale been central in aiding you in your research?
The small faculty-to-student ratio and Dr. Steiner. To have access to all of the different things we have here at Hillsdale was incredible, I had the confocal microscope all to myself, which is very expensive, and I probably would not have had the opportunity to use it on my own and on my own time at another school.
How did you enjoy your overall experience of working on this project?
I loved it. Working with the research, I wasn’t sure how much I was going to like it at first, but I really enjoyed being able to work independently. Everyday there was a fresh challenge, a new and fun problem to solve on a daily basis.
What are your future plans?
Attending medical school at Wayne State University in Detroit.
What have you learned most about yourself in this process, or what’s one major takeaway?
Expect the unexpected when doing research, and don’t stick to your plan too strictly. You have to be fluid and dynamic.
What has been most difficult and most rewarding?
Time management was difficult. I had to get everything done in six weeks, and I really felt like I was still wanting to do more at the end. It was very exhausting, but also very rewarding when I developed my images and looked at my data, and saw things that would have never made sense to me before. It was also very neat to have my peers be interested in my work and get to share it with them as well.
