IU home to state's 1st select agent laboratory

The bacterium that causes bubonic plague is coming to Bloomington, and it will be the first pathogen studied in IU’s new select agent laboratory.

The facility is the first laboratory of its kind in Indiana. The location of the lab is undisclosed.

IU biologist Melanie Marketon is the first scientist to use the lab, and she will focus on the study of Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes the plague.

“I find Y. pestis to be very fascinating,” Marketon said. “It is an example of an organism that has evolved to adapt to its niches, which include insect vectors and mammalian hosts.”

Marketon said studying the bacterium specifically is worthwhile because, though it is not a big threat in the United States, it is classified as a re-emerging disease and there are epidemics occurring in other parts of the world.

She added that E. coli and Salmonella, among others, work the same way Y. pestis does.

“Since so many organisms use similar strategies to cause disease, the information we gain from Y. pestis could be used to help treat these other

infections by providing alternatives to traditional antibiotics and pesticides,” Marketon said.

Marketon, who will be the only scientist conducting research in the lab this year, said she plans to study the process by which the Y. pestis bacterium changes the cells of its host to cause the disease, which could also be applied to other diseases like E. coli.

Marketon said the process of using the lab, which is funded by the IU Commitment to Excellence Fund and the College of Arts and Sciences, was a long one. She said she used her prior training and experience working in a select agent lab from her postdoctoral work to help plan and design the lab to make a safe and secure facility.

While the lab was being built, she developed the protocols for her experiments that had to be approved by many different agencies, both at IU and federal agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

She added that everyone working in the lab went through background checks and training to make the procedures seem second nature.

Sarah Null, the director of biological safety at IU, said the lab and scientists take many precautions to assure the safety of the lab.

Null said the scientists wear extra layers of protective clothing, and the gear is sterilized upon exiting the laboratory and a second time after removal.

The plague bacteria is only handled inside a biosafety cabinet. All items that enter the lab are decontaminated or sterilized before being removed, and equipment is tested and re-certified regularly.

The lab itself has a separate air handling system that is designed to prevent lab air from flowing out of the facility and into the surrounding areas.

The system even maintains proper air flow during a power outage. The air is filtered before being exhausted from the building, and the exhausted air is not drawn back into the building with supply air, Null said.

Roger Innes, chairman of the IU biology department, said the department has been looking forward to this lab for quite some time, when it made a commitment more than five years ago to hire additional faculty in the area of bacterial pathogenesis, the study of disease-causing bacteria.

Innes said he hopes IU can hire more scientists to work in this lab in the future, but there are no faculty searches planned for the biology department in the coming year because of fiscal constraints facing the University.

Innes added that there are not many facilities such as this lab, and that will give IU an advantage in the science industry.

“After 9/11, the National Institutes of Health dedicated a significant amount of funding to basic research on pathogens of this type with the long-term goal of developing better antibiotics to protect the public in the event of a terrorist attack using biological agents,” Innes said. “With the addition of this facility, IU researchers will be able to
contribute to this effort.”