RIBS 2025 Research Project
Genetic and Environmental Modulation of Vibrio fischeri Motility and Biofilm Formation
What This Was About
At RIBS 2025, I spent weeks working with Vibrio fischeri — the glowing bacteria that live inside Hawaiian bobtail squid.
- These bacteria form biofilms (sticky layers of cells) and move around using motility (like swimming).
- We wanted to see how genes (like VxrA, VxrB, CrvY, BinK…) and environmental conditions (like calcium, PABA, antibiotics, temperature) affect those behaviors.
- To do this, we used mutant strains, CRISPRi knockdowns, and lots of phenotypic assays.
What I Actually Did
I was responsible for:
- Preparing different growth plates (TBS, TBS+CaCl₂, TBS+PABA, etc.)
- Running motility assays (measuring how far colonies spread in soft agar)
- Running biofilm assays (looking at smooth vs rough vs wrinkled colonies)
- Collecting and organizing all the data (lots of scanning plates and measuring colony diameters).
- Comparing our results to published studies (Dial et al. 2021, Septer & Visick 2024).
What We Found
Here’s the big picture from my experiments:
Motility
- Most strains looked normal.
- CrvY mutants swam a little less → ✔ matched what we expected.
- Antibiotics + IPTG? Only tiny changes, nothing dramatic.
Biofilm Formation
