associate professor of biology, to understand how a bacterium that causes gonorrhea has developed resistance to antibiotics. “This is good training,” Frazier says. “We’re already doing the research. Dr. Horvath’s seminars prepare us to present it. It’s important to learn how to break it down to make it understandable.” “I like her enthusiasm,” McMillan adds. “Dr. Horvath looks for ways to spark interest in science. We students sometimes struggle with explaining the research to the public. Figuring out what needs to be explained and what’s too complex for a nonscientist is a skill we need to learn.” Horvath and a Biology Department colleague, Dr. Antonio Baines, also connect students to research via the NCCU Biology Society. Composed mostly of undergraduate students, the society had been inactive in recent years, but it now has about 90 members. Working with the students, Horvath and Baines bring in speakers about once a month to offer a range of science perspectives. One of Horvath’s goals is to show the students some of the many career options available to students with science degrees. “About 90 percent of the members of the club are pre-med or ron mcmi lli an think they want to be,” Horvath says. “Some of them realize at some point that medicine isn’t really for them, and maybe they don’t know what else to do. So we’re trying to show them some opportuniLately, for example, she has ties. Other biomedical fields are the gotten involved in what she someprimary focus, but I’m also bringing in times calls “the armpit project,” “This is good training, people who think about evolution and which is a successor to a previous we’re already doing the research. about science communication.” “belly button project” conducted Dr. Horvath’s seminars prepare Amid all the outreach efforts, in collaboration with N.C. State us to present it. It’s important Horvath remains a practicing research University biologist Rob Dunn. In to learn how to break it down to scientist. Her expertise is in genetics recent years, scientists have been and evolution, and specifically in a field focusing attention on the bacteria make it understandable.” ______ that combines the two, evolutionary and other microbes that live inside genomics. She studies the evolutionary humans or on their skin. Evidence is jar e d f ra z i e r forces that have shaped the genomes of growing that these microbes play a nonhuman primates, our closest relavital role in many processes, includtives, with an eye toward learning about causes of human diseases. ing training and modulating our immune system, helping it to At the front window of her lab in Raleigh, she displays a collection accurately distinguish between friend and foe. of 10 primate skulls, ranging from a tiny mouse lemur to a beetle The belly button project was a venture into citizen science. browed gorilla. She often brings them out to show to museum Participating scientists from the Nature Research Center, N.C. visitors, and animated discussions about primates and evolution State University and elsewhere used sterile cotton swabs to colusually follow. lect microbial samples from the navels of 60 people nationwide, As a lab director at the Nature Research Center, she also has a including visitors to the museum in Raleigh. hand in other research projects. And she is finding that getting the “You have microbes living all over your skin — trillions of public involved in the research can make projects lively and fun. them,” Horvath says. “Most of them are beneficial to you. If you
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have a community of good microbes present on your skin, you are less likely to have harmful microbes colonize your skin and cause a real problem.” The results of the belly button study were published by the Dunn lab and collaborators in late 2012 in PLOS ONE, the world’s leading open-access journal. The findings included identifying types of bacteria that humans are most likely to share, and those that are most abundant. The scientists also encountered great variety: From the 60 samples, they identified 2,368 types (phylotypes is the scientific term) of bacteria, most of them found on just a few of the samples and most of them occurring in small numbers. The project produced results of significant scientific interest — and it was also fun. “People can connect with a study of belly button bacteria since everyone has a belly button,” Horvath says. The success of the project led the scientists to launch a follow-up study that sampled microbes from people’s armpits. Horvath, given her particular interest in primates, was
Above: Horvath’s skull collection is usually displayed at the front window of her lab. Left: The Nature Research Center — a lively mix of labs and museum displays.
Jared Frazi er
interested in expanding the study to include some nonhuman primates. As a result, armpit swabs were collected from a few gorillas, chimpanzees and baboons at the North Carolina Zoo in Asheboro. Some were quite pungent. “Gorillas have a very distinct body odor,” Horvath notes dryly. “We are finding that non-human primates have many different kinds of microbes on them,” she says. Over the summer, one of the undergraduate Biology Society students, Nishika Campbell, conducted independent research to investigate which microbes live on the primates sampled from the zoo. “We also found that whether people wear antiperspirant or deodorant affects the microbes that grow on them even after they have stopped wearing the product,” Horvath says. “So your daily habits really do have an effect on your microbes — and that could ultimately affect your health.” “Armpits sound a bit gross,” she says, “but even if you think it’s gross, it’s intriguing. And I take a personal interest in the project because the primates that I study use odor to communicate. People might ask, ‘Why are you doing that silly study?’ but it’s really relevant to human health, and to understanding our nonhuman relatives.” Anecdotal reports suggest that skin wounds on other primates heal faster than on humans, she says. “The microbes on the skin could be partially responsible, and as of yet, we don’t know much about most of those microbes. We’re just getting started, and there’s just so much more to learn.” Fall 2013 NCCU NOW
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