UCM Instructor Has Novel Concept Research Published in Nature Communications

Dawn Pauling, Ph.D., associate instructor of Biology at the University of Central Missouri, conducts environmental
research as part of her doctoral work with the University of Missouri. Pauling is swabbing prairie dog burrows to collect
fleas during the field work portion of the project; the paper published in Nature Communications is based on her lab work.

 

Cementing her place in scientific history, Nature Communications has published novel research from a University of Central Missouri (UCM) faculty member.

Dawn Pauling, Ph.D., associate instructor of Biology, and three colleagues from the University of Missouri-Columbia authored “Transovarial transmission of Yersinia pestis in its flea vector Xenopsylla cheopis.” 

Nature Communications is a subset of Nature, considered the world's leading peer-reviewed multidisciplinary scientific journal.

“I don't know how to compare it to anything else because it's such a unique thing,” Pauling said of being published in Nature Communications. “But it is a big deal and it's a pretty big accomplishment that I keep trying to tell myself is actually real.”

Scott Lankford, Ph.D., chair of the Department of Biological and Clinical Sciences, said Pauling has had an incredible start to her career. Being published in the Nature family of publications is typically a long-term achievement, and Pauling already has her name in the journal as an associate instructor.

“Not only has she achieved all this work in that time period, she's also helped build up the structure at UCM to make more of this work possible and taken the leadership to make sure that's done right on our campus,” Lankford said. “The amount of background and extra work that it takes to have a collaboration that spans two universities and federal and state-level labs, it's been quite an achievement. We really couldn't be more proud.”

 

As part of her doctoral work at MU, Pauling worked in a microbiology lab that focused on Yersinia pestis, “the causative agent of plague, which is classified as a prioritized re-emerging zoonotic disease transmitted by fleas.”

“We do a lot of things in the lab, which are very important and very informative, but I always want to make sure that it can lead back to the natural setting,” Pauling said. “Just looking into some of the literature, there were just a lot of knowledge gaps as far as how we go from these cycles where we're not seeing a lot of mortality to these epizootics where you see a lot of mortality and it's very quick. The mechanisms that had been suggested didn't make sense for this rapid mortality to occur in such high numbers.”

Pauling began investigating environmental factors and the localization of the pathogen within the flea vector. She was trying to find what factors contributed to pathogen persistence and increased transmission by the flea. She said that despite indications from early studies that the bacteria does not leave the flea’s midgut, there were too many questions. The MU research team eventually found the pathogen entered reproductive tissue.

According to Pauling, the discovery was a novel concept in a scientific field that has been around for more than 100 years.

“It was terrifying at first because you're going to make this statement, which is something the whole field has said doesn't happen,” Pauling added.

Beyond the excitement about being published in a prestigious scientific journal, the impact of the research could be long-lasting. The information opens up a new path for understanding decades-long knowledge gaps regarding how the pathogen persists.

Yersinia pestis is the causative agent of plague, which most people associate with the bubonic plague and black death, pandemics that happened centuries ago. However, Pauling explained that it is still persistent and has been in the United States since 1901. 

“We don't see a lot of it (in the U.S.), but in other countries, we see a lot of deaths associated with it,” Pauling continued. “Trying to figure out how it's there, why it's there and why it's persisting will hopefully lead to new avenues to be able to try to remove it from the environment and find ways to reduce overall exposure for people.”

Pauling earned her doctorate last year, and the team is moving forward with additional projects related to the Yersinia pestis research. While it may have felt terrifying at first, Pauling said that her decision to ask new questions about something that was seemingly answered has opened up many different kinds of novel pathways.

“I think it's really cool that even now, you can show that it's OK to ask the questions that go outside the box, even though the field has already set that box,” Pauling said. “It's OK to do that because it can lead to really cool things like this.”

For more information about the Department of Biological and Clinical Sciences, visit ucmo.edu/biology.