RUMP Objectives

Welcome to RUMP
This university-wide initiative focuses on Microbiome Science Research, Education, Clinical Care, Technology transfer, and Community Outreach

"Messieurs, c'est les microbes qui auront le dernier mot." (Gentlemen, it is the microbes who will have the last word.)
—Louis Pasteur

Louis Pasteur. Archives Photographiques, Paris

Objectives

  • Develop academic, clinical, and industrial infrastructure to advance microbiome knowledge and practice.
  • Understand the ecological and biological characteristics of the human and environmental microbiomes in both health and disease, and find ways to restore to health.
  • Create a core facilities network for stakeholders to facilitate laboratory and analytical operations for microbiome research and applications.
  • Increase opportunity, outreach, and synergistic collaborations for faculty and students, industry, with state and national policy makers.
  • Partner with communities about their concerns and to educate about microbiome roles in health and disease.
  • Create a pathway for career development in microbiome studies.

News Spotlight

Intra-College Experience in Creative Research in Experimental and Applied Microbiomics (ICECREAM) Summer 2023
ICECREAM group pic

Intra-College Experience in Creative Research in Experimental and Applied Microbiomics (ICECREAM) Summer 2023

Read More › about Intra-College Experience in Creative Research in Experimental and Applied Microbiomics (ICECREAM) Summer 2023

Featured Event

RUMP Innovators in Host-Microbe Interactions in Ecology & Evolution
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RUMP Innovators in Host-Microbe Interactions in Ecology & Evolution

Irene Newton, PhD

Editor-in-Chief, Microbiology Resource Announcements

Professor of Biology

Microbiology Section Associate Chair, Biology

Indiana University, Bloomington

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Ackerson Hall, Room 123
180 University Ave, Newark, NJ 07102
Event Details › for RUMP Innovators in Host-Microbe Interactions in Ecology & Evolution

Featured Event

RUMP Annual Retreat 2024
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RUMP Annual Retreat 2024

KEYNOTE SPEAKER: Seth Bordenstein, PhD

All please register here!

Students, trainees, post-docs, junior faculty submit poster abstracts here!

Faculty submit short talks here!

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Busch Student Center
604 Bartholomew Road Piscataway NJ 08854 | MPR A
Event Details › for RUMP Annual Retreat 2024

Featured Publication

Faculty Spotlight

Jason Yang

Jason H. Yang, PhD

Assistant Professor and Chancellor Scholar of Microbiology, Biochemistry & Molecular Genetics

Center for Emerging Pathogens

Department of Microbiology, Biochemistry, and Molecular Genetics

Rutgers New Jersey Medical School

Research Focus: Systems biology of chronic and infectious diseases. Projects in the lab integrate experimental, computational and machine learning activities. Active projects are currently focused on antibiotics, innate immunity, tuberculosis, COVID-19, and heart failure

Selected Publication
Lopatkin AJ, Bening SC, Manson AL, et al. Clinically relevant mutations in core metabolic genes confer antibiotic resistance. Science. 2021;371:eaba0862. doi:10.1126/science.aba0862.

RUMP Featured Services -- Nicholas Bessman, PhD

Gnotobiotic Core

Managed by Animal Care, the gnotobiotic core at Rutgers University provides investigators with the ability to work with germ-free and SPF mice. Currently the core maintains a germ-free colony with C57BL/6 GF mice and Swiss Webster mice to support Rutgers investigators.  We offer many technical services that also support gnotobiotic studies.

https://research.rutgers.edu/animal-care/gnotobiotic-core

Our gnotobiotic core provides the following types of technical services to researchers as per their protocol needs:

  • Colony management and breeding of germ-free and SPF mice
  • Injections
  • Blood collection
  • Identification & tissue collection for genotyping - ear punch, tail snip
  • Body weight
  • Fecal collection
  • Sterility testing- food, environment, swabs
  • Sterile supplies for experiments-available upon request (ex: sterile gowns, gloves, 1.5ml microcentrifuge tubes, needles & syringes)
  • Health monitoring - in house microbiological testing, external diagnostic lab for molecular testing
  • Animal husbandry services
  • Rederivation offered in the future
  • Transfer of germ-free mice in autoclavable cages
  • Fecal storage at -80

RUMP Featured Project - Ann Stock, PhD

Regulation of polysaccharide utilization in Bacteroides

Dietary fiber is an important carbon source for some of the most abundant species of the gut microbiota. In Bacteroidetes, gene clusters encoding protein systems necessary for metabolism of specific complex carbohydrates are colocalized into polysaccharide utilization loci, or PULs. Genomes of Bacteroidetes typically encode several dozen different PULs and transcriptional expression of PULs is strictly regulated. PULs comprise the major nutrient acquisition system for Bacteroidetes and are thus key modulators of microbial ecosystems.

Many PULs are regulated by an unusual class of Two-Component Systems (TCSs) known as Hybrid Two-Component Systems, or HTCSs. In HTCSs, the transmembrane sensor histidine kinase and response regulator transcription factor of canonical TCSs are fused into a single polypeptide chain with extracellular ligand sensing, histidine autophosphorylation, phosphoryl transfer, and transcriptional regulation occurring within a single transmembrane dimer.

The Stock lab at the Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine is applying their expertise in structural and functional analysis of bacterial Two-Component System regulation of gene expression to characterize HTCSs in Bacteroides thetaiotamicron. Initial studies are focused on mechanistic characterization of phosphorylation, dimerization and DNA binding using representative recombinant HTCS proteins. Structural characterization is being pursued by X-ray crystallography and cryo-EM. HTCS signaling mechanisms will be further studied in Bacteroides cells to examine how protein localization impacts signaling.