Our Students – Student Summer Internships 2019

Cristina Moscoso – University of Maryland

Cristina Moscoso’s research focus includes determining ideal prebiotics to reduce the load of Salmonella strain in vitro (culture), alone and in combination with antibiotics such as ciprofloxacin, tetracycline and azithromycin commonly used for therapeutic purposes against Salmonella . Due to the rising antibiotic resistance rates in pathogenic bacteria, animals and humans, this has lead to better understanding of the importance of natural available products such as prebiotics towards this resistant strains. Therefore, to achieve this, Cristina has been testing the effect of prebiotics extracts in the Salmonella’s susceptibility to antibiotics. She is using various prebiotics to be able to compare their performance in the different Salmonella strains. The broader impact of her research aims to identify alternative food related components to reduce microorganisms resistance to antibiotics.

María G. Sanabria – “Research Intensive Summer Experience”  in Rutgers University

The overall objective of the research laboratory where María G. Sanabria worked under Dr. Diana Roopchand at Rutgers University is the development of a method for delivering grape polyphenols without the glycemic sugars naturally found in grapes. At the laboratory, they extract the grape polyphenols and stabilize them with oat bran fiber (OB) to improve the shelf-life of this newly formed GP-OB complex. The production of this complex has the main objective of elucidating the mechanism by which the symptoms of Metabolic syndrome are alleviated through supplementation in vivo. Their previous studies used soy protein isolate (SPI) to stabilize the GP. Nonetheless, they used OB to improve the gut microbial diversity with supplementation. Therefore, Sanabria’s specific role in the project was elucidating a cost-effective way of producing the GP-OB complex. Instead of mixing the GP powdered extract with OB, they were able to synthesize a brand-new product by altering their previous methods to improve efficiency in the product development process. Sanabria worked in this project during the summer of 2019 and will continue to do so by January 2020.