Emily Prudot Gonzalez '24 - Medical Mycology Research in the Perfect Lab

The Perfect Lab is where I found my interest in microbiology. I performed agar microdilution for the pathogenic fungi, Cryptococcus neoformans. In other words, I observed the resistance of 4000 crypto deletion strains at increasing concentrations of fluconazole as a steppingstone in finding the culprit of its resistance and ultimately supporting research in strengthening antifungals. In the image, I am transferring agar with isolates to their plates which would then be left in an incubator to grow. We took images of the plates with a really cool robot that took images of the plates in a span of 7 days.

After 7 weeks, I had some data. There were many resistant deletion strains related to the mitochondria and the membrane-related proteins which begged the question of their role in fluconazole resistance. Hypothetical proteins also had a notable concentration of resistance in fluconazole which encourages the investigation of their role in the cell. These questions are important to ask as Cryptococcus’ resistance to antifungal makes it difficult for patients affected by cryptococcal meningitis, a life-threatening disease, to be treated, especially with the limited antifungals able to be used.

Working in the lab consisted of lots of excitement in seeing how the fungi would react and a mountain of curious questions. This was my first ever experience in the lab - I hadn’t even taken general biology courses at Duke yet and their labs, so everything was pretty new to me. There was a great shift from an outside-looking-in curiosity to feeling more like a curious insider to this world of science. Although in the end I discovered research isn’t the path for me, I am elated to continue to work in the field of microbiology specifically in the Medical Lab Science setting.