Staphylococcus aureus strains exhibit exclusivity in regards to it’s toxin prevalence, especially with toxins responsible for food poisoning and necrotizing pneumonia

Staphylococcus aureus is a bacteria that can exist asymptomatically, but can be dangerous due to it’s individual toxin profile. These various toxins, however, seem to be mutually exclusive from another in some cases. Samples of S. aureus often have superantigen SELX and some samples have Staphylococcal Enterotoxin (SE) A, B, or C. Through the use of Airtable and various methods of data organization and comparison on the strains we’ve collected on campus, we found that SELX exhibits an inverse relationship with SE- A/B/C, and that SE- A/B/C also exhibits exclusivity between the three toxins. Through thorough research on S. aureus, we also found that this exclusivity is due to the presence of mobile genetic elements and the differences in phylogenetic development of this species

Chill out! The impact of stress hormones on cancer cells in vitro

Norepinephrine, the neurotransmitter responsible for stress response, is known to increase the life span ofcancer cells in the human body. By administeringnorepinephrine directly to HeLa cells in vitro, we wereable to track the impact that this neurotransmitter hason the proliferation cancer cells. In our study, we foundthat norepinephrine actually had a negative impact onthe proliferation of HeLa cells in vitro, but our resultsare deemed inconclusive due to possible experimentalerrors