{"id":1502,"date":"2022-05-02T14:22:33","date_gmt":"2022-05-02T14:22:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vanderbilt.edu\/evolution\/?p=1502"},"modified":"2023-03-27T13:39:24","modified_gmt":"2023-03-27T13:39:24","slug":"megan-behringer-faculty-profile","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vanderbilt.edu\/evolution\/megan-behringer-faculty-profile\/","title":{"rendered":"Megan Behringer Faculty Profile"},"content":{"rendered":"

By: Andy Flick, Evolutionary Studies Initiative scientific coordinator<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Woman
Behringer in front of the lab bench<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Megan Behringer joined Vanderbilt in 2020 and is currently an assistant professor of Biological Sciences with a secondary appointment to Pathology, Microbiology, and Immunology. She serves as the associate director of the Vanderbilt Microbiome Innovation Center<\/a> and is a member of the Evolutionary Studies Initiative<\/a>, currently serving on the Seminar Series Committee.<\/p>\n

In her short time here, she has been recognized by the dean and awarded the Steven and Bunny Fayne Dean\u2019s Faculty Fellowship in Biological Sciences.<\/p>\n

Behringer took a \u201cstochastic\u201d walk through academia to find herself at Vanderbilt today. When she was an undergraduate, an upper-classman friend told her about research opportunities while at Auburn. That led Behringer to a food microbiology lab in the college of agriculture. She worked in the lab studying Campylobacter jejuni<\/em> in retail poultry meat.<\/p>\n

\"Woman
Behringer explaining E. coli phenotypes to postdoctoral researcher Sarah Worthan.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Behringer explained, \u201cit was funny \u2013 I would talk to people doing field work and explain to them that my field work was to drive to the grocery store and I would buy breast meat from different farms and bring it back to the lab. Then, we would culture the Campylobacter<\/em> out of the meat and DNA fingerprint it.\u201d<\/p>\n

When a Campylobacter<\/em> infected patient would show up at the hospital, the infective strain could be cultured and matched to the survey data from the lab. As not all Campylobacter<\/em> strains are equally virulent, many infections don\u2019t lead to hospitalizations. However, when a particularly virulent strain was identified, the team could match the strain to the farm and the farm could be cleaned and sanitized to prevent future infections. This is an important and exciting way to start off in academia.<\/p>\n

After working with Campylobacter<\/em>, Behringer started researching Escherichia coli<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In Behringer\u2019s words, \u201cI really liked this idea of fingerprinting, and it was at the beginning of the genomics era. I liked bioinformatics and wanted to get more involved. My PI suggested I work at the vet school with a professor who was interested in developing genome-based diagnostics for E. coli<\/em> and urinary tract infections.\u201d<\/p>\n

During her M.S. at Auburn, she was really excited to work on the quinolone resistance-determining region. Quinolone is a group of synthetic antibiotics discovered in the 1960s. Scientists had high hopes that microbes would not evolve resistance as this group of antibiotics did not exist in nature. However, bacteria were quick to develop resistance through a single point mutation.<\/p>\n

During her Ph.D. in genetics at the University of Georgia, Behringer conducted her dissertation research with David Hall<\/a>. It\u2019s here that she was first introduced to experimental evolution and population genetics. \u201cI just found it incredibly interesting and challenging, it was a great way to merge my background in microbiology with my interests in genomics and bioinformatics.\u201d Although most of her Ph.D. research was conducted in yeast, Behringer was eager to get back to E. coli<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"Petri\u201cWhen a postdoctoral researcher job opened up with Mike Lynch<\/a> doing experimental evolution of E. coli<\/em>, I was really excited! I loved it and started digging into it. I started seeing mutations and phenotypes that reminded me of the UTI cultures I worked with during my Master\u2019s. To see these phenotypes start showing up in the experimental evolution populations I was working on was great; all of a sudden, I was looking at these experimental evolution lines differently \u2013I wanted to know the biology behind it and why we were seeing these particular mutations and these particular phenotypes. This got me interested in systems microbiology, what happens between genotype and phenotype, can we think more about the physiology,\u201d said Behringer.<\/p>\n

It was lucky for Vanderbilt and ESI that the postdoctoral researcher job worked out, as the backup plan was to pursue a career as a bioinformatician with the National Institute of Health.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By: Andy Flick, Evolutionary Studies Initiative scientific coordinator Megan Behringer joined Vanderbilt in 2020 and is currently an assistant professor of Biological Sciences with a secondary appointment to Pathology, Microbiology, and Immunology. She serves as the associate director of the Vanderbilt Microbiome Innovation Center and is a member of the Evolutionary Studies Initiative, currently serving…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2421,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n