STEM-CARE Faculty Presentation 2

Drs. Louis Levinger and Dina Lipkind will present their research.

Rye and Wheat Berry Microbiomes

Louis Levinger, PhD, Department of Biology

‘Sourdough’ breads, made using flours milled from grains including wheat and rye, are leavened with a natural starter. The starter microbiome originates from microorganisms found in grain and flour. Its composition changes markedly on incubation with regular feedings. Leavening results from yeast fermentation of the low concentration of simple sugars found in flour, and souring is due to acidifying bacteria such as lactobacillus. To initiate a long-term project, we analyzed rye and wheat berry microbiomes by amplification and sequencing of colonies obtained from plate cultures. Genera were identified using a 16S rRNA primer pair for bacteria and an Internal Transcribed Spacer (ITS) pair for fungi. Remarkably, dominant fungal and bacterial genera characteristics of a mature starter were not observed among 98 identified in the rye berries.

Lipkind Lab: Learning Complex Motor Skills - What Songbirds can Teach Us

Dina Lipkind, PhD, Department of Biology

Juvenile songbirds learn to sing a song that they hear from adults. Like learning to speak in children, song learning in songbirds is a gradual process that involves a lot of practice. My lab studies this learning process by recording and analyzing juvenile birds' vocal practice as they learn songs delivered by artificial "adults". I study zebra finches, an Australian songbird species that breeds well in captivity. I will talk about what we can learn from songbirds about the way complex skills, including human speech, are learned.