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Hi reddit! Since 1987 I have been an academic neurosurgeon at Stanford University. During my professional career I also invented the CyberKnife, and in doing so, the field of image-guided radiation. To date the CyberKnife has been used to treat more than one million patients, and derivative technologies have treated millions more. During my years in academia and the medical device industry I have come to appreciate the importance and power of peer-reviewed journals in guiding the practice of healthcare worldwide. From my own experience and frustration with the medical publishing process, I recently co-founded a next generation Open Access medical journal called Cureus. Peer-reviewed journals are an essential element of the bedrock underlying scientific progress. However, publishing in traditional journals has long been a time-consuming, complex and costly process. Although an unpaid workforce of highly skilled authors and reviewers does the hardest work in medical publishing, very expensive subscription fees typically limit the scope of readership. The alternative Open Access publishing system requires authors, many of whom lack significant research funding, to “pay to play.” Tragically, so many financial and procedural barriers are preventing the widespread generation and dissemination of medical knowledge, which as a point of fact, can be life saving in many cases. To my way of thinking something is very wrong with this existing system; access to advanced medical knowledge can and should be a human right! With this objective in mind, Cureus aspires to disrupt the status quo by making both the publishing and reading of quality peer-reviewed journal articles free, and thereby opening up the floodgates of medical knowledge to all of humanity. Now that you know what I’m up to, I turn the floor over to you - ask me anything about neurosurgery, Cureus, the CyberKnife, medical publishing or anything else that you can think of. I’ll be back at 1 pm EST to answer your questions. Bring it on!

EDIT: Thank you everybody for all the GREAT questions! Some of us will have to go do some sciencing, but we’ll keep checking in and continue to answer your questions - please keep ’em coming! Hi Reddit, We are a group of scientists who use genomic sequencing technology to study the spread of viruses during outbreaks. Most recently we’ve been exploring the spread of Zika virus across the Americas. In order to understand how the virus has spread, we sequenced the virus genome from samples obtained from infected individuals, as well as from the mosquitoes that transmit the virus. Analysis of the genomic data allowed us to show how Zika virus spread across South America and Central America, into the Caribbean, and from there into Florida in the United States. Our papers on Zika virus can be read for free here: Zika virus evolution and spread in the Americas by Metsky et al. Establishment and cryptic transmission of Zika virus in Brazil and the Americas by Faria et al. Genomic epidemiology reveals multiple introductions of Zika virus into the United States by Grubaugh et al. The following scientists will be participating in this AMA: Kristian Andersen, PhD, an Assistant Professor at The Scripps Research Institute and Director of Infectious Disease Genomics at the Scripps Translational Science Institute. Kristian has a background in host-pathogen evolution and immunology. Nathan Grubaugh, PhD, a Research Associate at The Scripps Research Institute. Nathan is a postdoc in the Andersen Laboratory and is an expert on mosquito-borne viruses, such as Zika, chikungunya, and West Nile. Hayden Metsky, a member of the Sabeti Lab at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Hayden is a graduate student in computer science at MIT and is interested in computational biology, machine learning, and their applications in viral genomics. Shirlee Wohl, a member of the Sabeti Lab at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Shirlee is a graduate student in Systems Biology at Harvard and is interested in using genomic approaches to understand viral disease transmission. Bronwyn MacInnis, PhD, is Associate Director of Malaria and Viral Genomics at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, with experience in combining genomic technologies and epidemiology to understand and control infectious diseases affecting global health. Jason Ladner, PhD, a member of the Center for Genome Sciences at USAMRIID. Jason is an evolutionary biologist who uses genetic data to understand the emergence and spread of pathogens. Nick Loman, PhD, is a Professor of Microbial Genomics and Bioinformatics at the University of Birmingham. His research focuses on the use of sequencing for the diagnosis and surveillance of infectious diseases. He has applied portable nanopore sequencing in field conditions in Guinea during the Ebola epidemic and in a mobile laboratory that travelled through Brazil to investigate Zika. Steve Schaffner, PhD, a senior staff scientist at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. He is an ex-physicist who applies computational tools to study the population genetics of humans and their pathogens. Nathan Yozwiak, PhD, is Associate Director of Viral Genomics at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard with experience in using genomic technologies to detect and understand viruses and expanding these capabilities to regions at risk of serious outbreaks. We’ll be back at 1pm EST/ 10am PST to answer your questions. Ask us about genetics, genomics, virus biology, outbreak surveillance - ask us anything!

EDIT: David Lombardi will not be joining today’s chat. Hi Reddit, My name is Dorothee Fischer and I am a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. My research focuses on how to design shift schedules that minimize risks for health and safety using the fact that people sleep and function optimally at very different times of day (they’re different chronotypes). My coauthor, David Lombardi, will be joining me for today’s chat. We recently published a study paper titled “Chronotypes in the US - influence of age and sex” in PLOS ONE. In this study, we found that there are large differences in chronotype among individuals at any age (from 15 to over 80) and that chronotype differs systematically by age such that on average adolescents aged 17-19 are the latest chronotypes in society making it hard for many high school students to accommodate early school start times. If you want to know more, Ask Us Anything at 1pm ET!

Recent evidence suggests that bilingualism leads to domain-general cognitive outcomes. Impressively, some research has suggested that bilinguals have delayed onset of symptoms of dementia compared to monolinguals. Mukadam, Sommerlad, and Livingston (in press) recently conducted a meta-analysis to examine the strength of the protective effect of bilingualism on dementia. We review their findings in the following commentary.

ACS AMA Hi Reddit! My name is Nathan Gianneschi and I research nanomaterials at the University of California, San Diego, but I am moving my laboratory to Northwestern University; coming soon, at the beginning of July this year. Recently work in my lab was published in ACS Central Science, an open access journal, entitled “Mimicking Melanosomes: Polydopamine Nanoparticles as Artificial Microparasols” http://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acscentsci.6b00230. This work describes a nanomaterial that could be used to protect cells from UV damage. I look forward to answering your questions about this research today! More broadly, our research group takes an interdisciplinary approach to nanomaterials research with a focus on multifunctional materials with interests that include biomedical applications, programmed interactions with biomolecules and cells, and basic research into nanoscale materials design, synthesis and characterization. For this work I have been awarded the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, the NIH Director’s Transformative Research Award and with a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. My academic background started with my B.Sc. (Hons) at the University of Adelaide, Australia in 1999. In 2005 I completed my Ph.D at Northwestern University. Following a Dow Chemical postdoctoral fellowship at The Scripps Research Institute, in 2008 I began my independent career at the University of California, San Diego where I am currently Teddy Traylor Scholar and Professor of Chemistry & Biochemistry, NanoEngineering and Materials Science & Engineering. In addition to my NIH citation, I was awarded a Dreyfus Foundation Fellowship, I am a Kavli Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, and am an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellow. Ask me anything about using nanomaterials for biomedical applications, including this work on melanosome mimics. I will be back at 11am EDT (10am CDT, 8am PDT, 3pm UTC) to answer your questions. I’m back to answer questions (10am CDT). Hello! Thank you to all of you for your interest and fantastic questions. I have enjoyed trying to answer as many of you as possible, and I apologize if I was too brief, or could not get to your question today. Thank you to the ACS, and the journal, ACS Central Science for setting up this AMA session. All the best with your work, studies, life and health. Signing off - 12:57pm (CDT)

I am Andrew Yau, Professor of Physics at University of Calgary, Canada, and Editor of Geophysical Research Letters (GRL), a research journal published by AGU focusing on high-impact scientific advances in all major geoscience disciplines. I am a space scientist. I design satellite instruments such as ion mass spectrometers, and I am interested in the effects of weather in space around the Earth - and other planets. For example, how and why do solar storms cause the heating of the upper atmosphere and its escape into space here on Earth? How about on Venus, Mars, and Jupiter? How does the solar wind produce the aurora, and the associated electrical currents in the ionosphere here on Earth? How about on Jupiter and Saturn, which also have an internal magnetic field? I’ll be back at 12 EDT to answer your questions. Ask Me Anything! The AGU AMA series is conducted by the Sharing Science program. Sharing Science: By scientists, for everyone. More at sharingscience.agu.org. Thanks, everyone, for participating in today’s AMA. It has been great fun – I hope my answers to your questions have provided a glimpse of the exciting scientific discoveries about the largest planet in our Solar System, Jupiter, from the NASA Juno mission. Some of these discoveries were reported in the recent Special Issue of the Geophysical Research Letters (GRL) for Juno. I encourage you to check out the GRL website for these discoveries as well as some even newer ones that are in the pipeline: http://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/hub/issue/10.1002/grl.v44.10/ Sorry I didn’t have a chance to field many of the other questions. Have a great day!

Hi Reddit, My name is Sarka Lisonkova and I am an Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia, Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology. My research focuses on risk factors and determinants of severe maternal morbidity. I recently published a study titled ‘Maternal age and severe maternal morbidity: a population-based retrospective cohort study’ in PLOS Medicine. This study shows that older mothers – aged 40 years or more – have increasingly higher rates of potentially life-threatening conditions including acute cardiac events, shock, acute renal failure, amniotic fluid embolism, and serious complications of obstetric interventions. Even though these serious complications are rare, our results provide important information for counseling to women who contemplate delaying childbirth until their forties. I will be answering your questions at 1pm ET. Ask me Anything! Don’t forget to follow me on Twitter @sarkalis.

ACS AMA I am Mircea Dincă, and I am an Associate Professor of Chemistry at MIT, leading a lab focused on the design and synthesis of new materials for energy and environmental applications. In particular, we are interested in developing a class of materials called metal-organic frameworks, which are very porous. Most recently, we have shown that these “super-sponges” can adsorb record amounts of water, and that one can use this high water uptake to “suck” moisture from the atmosphere and deliver fresh water in water-stressed dry areas of low natural humidity. This work was recently published in ACS Central Science under the title “Record Atmospheric Fresh Water Capture and Heat Transfer with a Material Operating at the Water Uptake Reversibility Limit” and is available free of charge for readers at: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acscentsci.7b00186 This paper is just one example of many ways in which we use metal-organic frameworks for renewable energy applications, including record-setting supercapacitors and smart windows, or for heterogeneous catalysis of importance for large industrial processes such as ethylene dimerization, used in polyethylene production. For an overview of the many exciting opportunities offered by metal-organic frameworks as an up-and-coming class of advanced materials, check out our accessible Outlook on this field, also published recently in ACS Central Science “Grand Challenges and Future Opportunities for Metal–Organic Frameworks” http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acscentsci.7b00197 By way of background, I was born in Romania, and moved to the US for my undergraduate degree, which I obtained at Princeton University in 2003. I completed my graduate work at UC Berkeley and graduated with a PhD in Inorganic Chemistry in 2008. Following 2 years as a Postdoctoral Scholar at MIT, I started my independent research group at MIT in 2010, where I have been an Associate Professor since 2015. For my group’s research I have been awarded a Sloan Fellowship, a Cottrell Award, and a Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award. In 2016, I was selected for NSF’s Alan T. Waterman Award. Ask me anything about our work on metal-organic frameworks and its relationship to modern energy or environmental research! I will be back at 1pm EDT (11am PDT, 5pm UTC) to answer your questions. MD logged in, June 20, 12:58pm, EST. Thank you for your questions reddit! MD out June 20, 2:03pm, EST.

The mission of my research program is to accurately detect risk, especially for suicidal behavior, for all people at all points in time. To this end, there are four major elements of my research: (1) discovery and assessment of novel constructs; (2) prediction in the short-term; (3) prediction on a large scale; and (4) the conceptualization of suicide as a complex classification problem. My approach represents a radical shift from the status quo, with the aim of substantially advancing risk identification, especially for suicidal behavior. My goal is to make major progress on this front over the next 10 years. For more information, you could check out this NBC News MACH article written about this kind of research https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/innovation/ai-coming-help-doctors-predict-suicide-n763166 or my lab’s website here www.risklabfsu.com. Hi everyone! Thank you so much for taking the time to ask questions. I really enjoyed answering your questions, and very much appreciated the interest in this massive public health problem. It’s time for me to sign out, but I’ll check back later and answer a few more. Have a nice afternoon!

Hi reddit, I'm Steve Bradbury, a professor of environmental toxicology at Iowa State University. My research spans pesticide resistance management, pollination services and monarch butterfly conservation, and sustainable agriculture. I also had a long career at the Environmental Protection Agency. I served on the National Academies committee that wrote the report on future biotechnology products. I'm Farren Isaacs, assistant professor of molecular, cellular, and developmental biology at Yale University. My research focuses on using foundational genomic and biomolecular engineering technologies to develop new genetic codes. I served on the National Academies committee. We're talking about the landscape of future biotechnology products and the capacity, expertise, and tools of the U.S. regulatory system that oversees those products. We will be back at 1 pm ET to answer your questions, Ask us anything! You can read about more about our committee's work and download our report here.

Sexually transmitted infections (STIs) are really common – there are about 20 million new cases every year in the United States and about 110 million total infections according to the Centers for Disease Control (https://www.cdc.gov/std/stats/sti-estimates-fact-sheet-feb-2013.pdf). Yet people are often afraid to ask questions about these infectious diseases because of stigma around sex and STIs. We study STIs for a living and we’re not squeamish. We will be back at 1 pm ET to answer your questions, Ask us anything! Christine Johnston, Assistant Professor of Medicine, University of Washington. I’m a physician-scientist at the University of Washington. I’m board-certificated in internal medicine and infectious diseases and provides primary care to patients with HIV infection. My clinical research focuses on the natural history and pathobiology of genital herpes simplex virus (HSV) infection and I’m interested in novel therapies to prevent and manage HSV infection, such as antiviral agents and vaccines. In addition, I am the Medical Director of the University of Washington Sexually Transmitted Diseases Prevention Training Center, which educates health care providers about prevention and management of sexually transmitted infections (STI). I earned her MD from the University of Minnesota Medical School in 2001. Ina Park, Medical Consultant, Division of STD Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Associate Professor, Department of Family and Community Medicine, University of California San Francisco School of Medicine; Medical Director, California Prevention Training Center. I’m a medical epidemiologist with a passion for empowering and informing others about sexually transmitted disease (STD) prevention. My research interests include evaluation of serologic assays for diagnosis of syphilis and assessing the population-level impact of human papillomavirus vaccination. In 2012 I was recognized with the Young Investigator of the Year Award by the American STD Association, and recently served as a contributing author for the 2015 CDC STD Treatment Guidelines. I am currently writing a narrative non-fiction book for the lay public on STD and HIV prevention entitled “CLAP: The Science of Sex and its Least Intended Consequences”. I earned my MD in 2001 from the University of California, Los Angeles School of Medicine and completed my residency in Family Medicine at the Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Los Angeles.

I am Jill Trepanier, Assistant Professor in the Geography and Anthropology Department at LSU. I’ve been at LSU for five years, and my area of expertise is the understanding of hurricane risk variability. I have been working in the area since 2007 and am fascinated with all things extreme weather. The types of questions I ask include why do hurricanes more frequently visit Louisiana compared to Tampa, Florida? Are we starting to see more severe hurricanes in a warmer climate? What changes happen to hurricanes when ocean temperatures rise? And what is the likelihood of extreme winds and deep storm surges at locations along a hurricane-prone coastline? Typically, I use statistics and maps to help answer my questions. And, as a geographer, I always make sure that the spatial element of the problem is included because, for me, differences across space are everything! I’ll be back at 12 pm ET to answer your questions, ask me anything! The AGU AMA series is conducted by the Sharing Science program. Sharing Science: By scientists, for everyone. More at sharingscience.agu.org.

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[ACS AMA](file http://imgur.com/hoKm4RT) Hello Reddit! I am a chemical scientist and a designer. I combine PhD-level scientific knowledge with years of experience in graphic design to develop attractive design solutions with high scientific accuracy. I do this, because I think it is important to communicate research elegantly and efficiently. Here’s my background: I obtained my BS and MS in chemistry from the Technical University of Munich, Germany. I studied abroad at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Saudi Arabia and worked as a research intern with the Schlumberger Research Centre Cambridge, United Kingdom. In 2012, I joined the group of Konrad Tiefenbacher at the chair of organic chemistry at TUM for my doctoral studies in the field of organic chemistry. In 2016, I was selected to participate in the SciFinder Future Leaders program as part of a diverse group of 26 researchers from across the globe. Here I realized that I would like to build my future by combining my two passions: chemistry and design. Following this route, I moved to Berlin to start an independent career as a graphic designer for scientists. Please find more information and examples of my work over here: www.jorichers.com and on twitter: @JoRichers Ask me anything about science visualization, cover designs, and illustrations. In particular, if you face a specific visualization challenge or want to improve a design, I am happy to give feedback and advice. I’ll be back at 11:00 a.m. EDT (3:00 p.m. UTC) to answer your questions. /edit (11:05 a.m. EDT): Hi reddit! I see a lot of great questions, thank you for you interest! I try to answer as many as I can… /edit (1:25 p.m. EDT): Taking a short break. I will be back soon to answer more questions.

Hello Reddit, we will be answering questions starting at 1 PM EST. We have a large team of scientists from many different timezones, so we will continue answering questions throughout the week. Keep the questions coming! About this Discovery: On January 4, 2017 the LIGO twin detectors detected gravitational waves for the third time. The gravitational waves detected this time came from the merger of 2 intermediate mass black holes about 3 billion lightyears away! This is the furthest detection yet, and it confirms the existence of stellar-mass black holes. The black holes were about 32 solar masses and 19 solar masses which merged to form a black hole of about 49 solar masses. This means that 2 suns worth of energy was dispersed in all directions as gravitational waves (think of dropping a stone in water)! More info can be found here Simulations and graphics: Simulation of this detections merger Animation of the merger with gravitational wave representation The board of answering scientists: Martin Hendry Bernard F Whiting Brynley Pearlstone Kenneth Strain Varun Bhalerao Andrew Matas Avneet Singh Sean McWilliams Aaron Zimmerman Hunter Gabbard Rob Coyne Daniel Williams Tyson Littenberg Carl-Johan Haster Giles Hammond Jennifer Wright Sean Levey Andrew Spencer The LIGO Laboratory is funded by the NSF, and operated by Caltech and MIT, which conceived and built the Observatory. The NSF led in financial support for the Advanced LIGO project with funding organizations in Germany (MPG), the U.K. (STFC) and Australia (ARC) making significant commitments to the project. More than 1,000 scientists from around the world participate in the effort through the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, which includes the GEO Collaboration. LIGO partners with the Virgo Collaboration, which is supported by Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN) and Nikhef, as well as Virgo’s host institution, the European Gravitational Observatory, a consortium that includes 280 additional scientists throughout Europe. Additional partners are listed at: http://ligo.org/partners.php.

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Thank you for all the questions! We are signing off now. Hi, we’re NASA technologists working on space communications systems that allow NASA to connect astronauts to Earth. This can include communications with Mission Control in Houston, with schools for STEM activities and even with social media accounts. Our Space Network provides 24/7/365 communications capabilities with the International Space Station, and with launch vehicles that service the space station. This year, we’re launching a new Tracking and Data Relay Satellite that will expand the capabilities of that network. We’re also working on laser communications for future human spaceflight missions. We are: · Don Cornwell, NASA Advanced Communications and Navigation Projects Lead ·Bob Menrad, NASA Exploration and Space Communications Associate Director ·Todd King, NASA Project Manager for Orion Laser Communications System (LEMNOS) ·Greg Heckler, NASA Deputy Telecommunications Lead for Tracking and Data Relay Satellites Amber Jacobson, NASA Exploration and Space Communications Education and Public Outreach Lead Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter at @NASA_TDRS, @NASALasercomm and @NASASCaN!

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ACS AMA Hi Reddit! My name is Mallory Hinks. I recently defended my Ph.D. in Atmospheric Chemistry at University of California, Irvine. For the last 5 years as a graduate student, I have worked for Professor Sergey Nizkorodov (http://aerosol.chem.uci.edu/). My work has been focused on understanding the effects of environmental conditions on the chemical and physical properties of atmospheric aerosols and how they interact with sunlight in the atmosphere. If you want a little more background, here is a video about aerosols and my research to give you a basic overview: https://youtu.be/F-UW8oMiNng While in graduate school, I developed a passion for science communication. I entered and won multiple science communication competitions including the UCI Grad Slam competition and the ACS ChemChamps competition. Following those experiences, I expanded my extracurricular activities to include more science communication opportunities. As a Science Communication Fellow for the Loh Down on Science radio show (http://www.lohdownonscience.org/), I wrote scripts for 90 second radio segments that aired on NPR. As a Communication Consultant for the UCI Graduate Resource Center, I advised students on their presentations in one-on-one meetings. I hope that I can help inspire scientists at all levels to develop an interest in science communication! I’m looking forward to answering your questions about atmospheric chemistry, science communication or about life as a graduate student! I will be back at 12:00p EDT (9a PDT, 4p UTC) to start answering your questions. EDIT: Thank you for all of your questions! This was harder than I thought it would be! I’ve got to sign off now!

The mods of /r/philosophy are pleased to announce an upcoming AMA by Barry Lam, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Vassar College and the Executive Producer and Host of philosophy podcast Hi-Phi Nation. Barry will be joining us on Monday June 5th at 12PM EST to discuss his philosophy, podcasts and everything in between with a live AMA. Hear it from him: Barry Lam I am Barry Lam, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Vassar College and the Executive Producer and Host of the Hi-Phi Nation podcast, the first story-driven documentary-style show about philosophy. I just completed production and release of the first season of Hi-Phi Nation as Humanities Writ-Large fellow at Duke University, where the first season covered stories and philosophy ranging from the possibilities of posthumous harm, the morality of war, the referent of religious terms in Christianity and Islam, the philosophy of music, the replication crisis in the statistical sciences, philosophy of gender, Kuhn and scientific realism, and the philosophy of love. I would be happy to talk about any of the substantive issues that arose from these episodes, as well as discuss any issues concerning doing philosophy in a story-driven way. Here are a few select episodes on Soundcloud: Episode 1: The Wishes of the Dead Episode 3: The Morality of War Episode 4: The Name of God Episode 7: Hackademics II (Epistemology of Replication Crisis) Some interviews and discussions about Hi-Phi Nation: My posts about the show at Leiter Reports The American Philosophical Association Blog interview Vassar’s Interview Elucidations Podcast, extended discussion of the wishes of the dead My own philosophical work has been in epistemology and the philosophy of language, particularly on the nature of epistemic rationality, and in experimental semantics and pragmatics. I would be happy to have a discussion about those topics. In the past two years I’ve set technical research aside to produce what I hope will be an ongoing series of narrative story-driven philosophy akin to the best productions we have for economics and the social sciences, such as Freakonomics Radio and Invisibilia. It is my hope that having a high-production story-driven show about philosophy will open up the field to lots of new people, as well as let existing fans of philosophy appreciate the way it connects with journalism, history, law, and nonfiction writing. Links: Subscribe to the show on Apple Podcast Go to the website and subscribe to the blog for announcements Follow on Twitter Follow on Facebook Paypal donation page Patreon Page AMA Please feel free to post questions for Barry here. He will look at this thread before he starts and begin with some questions from here while the initial questions in the new thread come in. Please join me in welcoming Professor Barry Lam to our community!

Hi Reddit, My name is Hui Wu, a Professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. My research focuses on microbial molecular mechanisms that contribute to oral infectious diseases, such as dental caries and periodontal disease. Specifically, I am interested in protein glycosylation pathways and using novel small molecules to inhibit bacterial biofilms. And I’m Jessica Scoffield, a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. My research examines competitive interactions between commensals (“friendly bacteria”) and pathogens that occur in polymicrobial infections. I am particularly interested in discovering unique antimicrobial mechanisms used by commensal bacteria to inhibit pathogenic bacteria. We recently published a study titled A commensal streptococcus hijacks a Pseudomonas aeruginosa exopolysaccharide to promote biofilm formation, in PLOS Pathogens. The purpose of the study was to characterize the two-species biofilm of Pseudomonas aeruginosa (a pathogen) and Streptococcus parasanguinis (a commensal), which are two bacteria that are present in the lungs of cystic fibrosis patients. Our study revealed that S. parasanguinis can utilize products made by P. aeruginosa to promote its own biofilm, while simultaneously restricting the incorporation of P. aeruginosa into the biofilm. Our findings suggest that commensals, such as S. parasanguinis, may be able to inhibit the persistence of P. aeruginosa. We will be answering your questions at 1pm ET – Ask Us Anything!

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