Who is Justine Dees? What is The Joyful Microbe blog?

Hi! I’m Justine Dees, a bacteriophile with a PhD in microbiology. Welcome to my blog, The Joyful Microbe. In this, my first post, I am going to give you an overview of what I studied during my PhD, what I am doing now as a postdoc, and what I aim to do with this blog.

But first, here are three things to help you know me a little better:

1. I grew up and spent most of my life in Florida.
   
2. My husband is an agricultural pilot (crop duster), which is why we live in Mississippi.
   
3. I LOVE succulents—thus my personal website icon is a succulent.
   

Now that we got that out of the way, let’s get started.

What did I study for my PhD?

I completed my PhD at the University of Texas at Austin. My mentor was Dr. Marvin Whiteley, who studies, in his words, “the social lives of bacteria.” Did you know bacteria have social lives? They have their own ways of talking to and interacting with each other. Crazy, right?! While I was in his lab, I studied the bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa.

This bacterium causes many different types of infections (lung, skin, eye). But, interestingly, it not only lives in hosts but also in soil and water. So, you can find it living in people, in the ground, and sometimes in the water in a flower vase.

My PhD focused on three topics:

1. Antimicrobial resistance
   • Because P. aeruginosa is one of those superbugs—resistant to nearly every antibiotic on the market—I studied how it responds to and survives in the face of antimicrobials.
2. Polymicrobial interactions with Staphylococcus aureus
   • I also studied how P. aeruginosa interacts with the bacterium S. aureus. Why those two bacterial species? I’m so glad you asked. They are often found together in infections. And when they are together, they can cause worse infections than they do alone.
3. Behavior in human infections
   • And I studied how P. aeruginosa behaves during human infections. It sure is different from how it behaves in a test tube.

One of my side passions is bioinformatics

During my PhD, I learned how to code. I had never even opened up the terminal—the box (see pic below) where you type commands in your computer rather than clicking on things with the mouse—before graduate school. I found out, to my delight, that coding is so much fun. I know, coding probably sounds a little dry to some of you, but I swear it’s amazing. If you like puzzles, you will like coding.

The reason I learned how to code was because I needed to analyze some genome-wide “big data” sets. I used the high-throughput sequencing methods RNA-seq and transposon-insertion site sequencing (Tn-seq) during my PhD. Don’t worry if those things are not familiar to you. All you need to know, for now, is that these methods gave me a way to better understand how P. aeruginosa resists antimicrobials, lives with S. aureus in infections, and lives in different infection types.

What about that postdoc thingy?

Now, I am a postdoctoral researcher (postdoc) at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Dr. Brian Akerley‘s lab, which focuses on Haemophilus influenzae pathogenesis. Sometimes when I tell people I am a postdoc, they look at me funny. So, what the heck is a postdoc? For those of you who have never heard of such a thing, a postdoc is a research-based job some people take after they finish their PhD research, hence post + doctoral (after the doctorate).

People take a job as a postdoc for different reasons. Here are a few:

1. To continue down the road to an academic position as a professor.
2. To transition to another job after a PhD but to gain more research experience and publish more papers, which can lead to many different jobs.
3. To figure out what they want to do because they just aren’t sure yet!

What type of research do I do in my postdoc?

I’m fascinated by antibiotic resistance in bacteria, so I decided to study this topic in H. influenzae. I am using the high-throughput sequencing method, Tn-seq, I mentioned earlier. I have to admit, I’m kind of addicted to Tn-seq. If I could, I would probably Tn-seq everything.

Anyway, I’m studying the genes involved in H. influenzae resistance to the macrolide antibiotic, clarithromycin. I’m so thrilled because I have started writing a paper on this work and will hopefully see it published sometime in the near future.

This Blog: The Joyful Microbe

Okay. So, this blog. What is the point? Why am I doing this?

When I took microbiology during my undergrad, I had an amazing teacher who got me excited about microbes. I initially thought I was going to be a cancer researcher, but then I sat through his class and was like, “Whoa, I want to study that!” Now, I want to share my passion for microbes with you.

I am writing for anyone who has questions about microbes. I want you to know more about the microbes that don’t make us sick. And maybe a little more about the ones that do.

I recently posted on Twitter asking my fellow microbiologists what types of questions their friends ask. And, on Instagram, I asked my friends what they would like to know about bacteria. So, if you want to get an idea of the types of questions I will cover, you can look at the responses to those posts here on Twitter and here on Instagram.

So, who are you? Maybe you are a parent with a child who asked you, “why do I need to wash my hands?” Maybe you are a college student who is interested in pursuing a career in microbiology and you want to see what it’s like. Maybe you are a graduate student in microbiology and you want to read some interesting tidbits about microbes. Maybe you are a professor and you want to find some information on a microbiology topic that would be easy to share with your students.

Whoever you are, I want to share my excitement for microbes with you.

In this blog, I will write with a casual tone. I will throw in a sentence fragment here and there—I already used one, did you notice?—and I will exclaim things and use words I would say out loud like WHOA because I am talking about the things I LOVE!

In this blog, I aim to write in a way that will not be difficult for anyone outside of my area of research to understand. I have both scientist and non-scientist friends who I would like to share my blog posts with and for them to be able to understand what I’m talking about. Honestly, as a researcher, you can easily get caught up in your field and not realize you are writing or speaking in a way that is confusing to anyone who does not study your specific topic—be they scientists or non-scientists. So, I’ll do my best! Please feel free to let me know if things get confusing.

Lastly, if you would like to know more about the blog and why I named it the Joyful Microbe, check out the blog’s about page here.

I look forward to telling you more about the amazing world of microbes!

Now, it’s your turn. What would you like to know about the world of microbes? Feel free to leave a comment or talk to me on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook.