Degree

Honors Baccalaureate

Department

Biology

Document Type

Thesis

Abstract

This thesis contains original research and data from a set of experiments. The research being conducted focuses on how nutrient metabolism changes for the Klebsiella pneumoniae bacterium while it is in the diabetic urinary environment. K. pneumoniae has seen recent trends in hospital-related urinary tract infections, and is an ESKAPE group pathogen, which has been observed to have increased antibiotic resistance in recent decades. It has also been observed that patients with diabetes are more likely to contract urinary tract infection. The specific strain of K. pneumoniae being studied is TOP52. The experiments involve the bacteria being cultured in nutrient rich medium LB as the control, human urine, and human urine with 600 mg/dL of added glucose to simulate the diabetic urinary environment. Bacteria are exposed to these media for either 2 or 24 hours and after these time points, RNA is extracted from the bacteria and made into complementary DNA. This DNA is used in quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction to amplify the DNA and assess expression of different genes. The extracted RNA is also used for transcriptome-wide RNA sequencing to show change in gene expression on a global scale. Genes being studied are ones involved in glucose metabolism, nutrient transport, and energy production so as to give context of how K. pneumonia’s metabolism changes when in the diabetic urinary environment.

Date

Spring 2026

First Committee Chair

Ritwij Kulkarni

First Committee Member

Ian Patterson

Second Committee Member

Sohyoung Lee

Third Committee Member

Andrei Chistoserdov

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