UA Researcher Uses ‘Shotgun Sequencing’ to Study How Microorganisms Control Our Lives
Bonnie Hurwitz’s genome sequencing research aims to help doctors offer more personalized treatment plans more quickly.
Biosystems engineering professor Bonnie Hurwitz, right, and associate professor of pharmacology George Watts work with research specialist Candice Clark-Mason in the lab. (Photo: Paul Tumarkin/Tech Launch Arizona)
The rice genome. The grape genome. The original human genome project. You name it, assistant professor of biosystems engineering and BI05 Fellow Bonnie Hurwitz probably worked on it in her 12 years as a computational biologist in industry, where she combined her loves for genomics and computer programming.
Hurwitz came to the UA in 2008 for a PhD in ecology and evolutionary biology. She zipped through the program in just four years, and she had a baby in the middle of it to boot. Her daughter, born eight hours after Hurwitz’s comp exam, has influenced her mother’s research as a UA faculty member.
“I’m interested in the intricate pathways in microbes that govern how life works,” Hurwitz said. “Microorganisms live symbiotically with us and form a kind of microbial superorganism that prevents pathogens from getting through our skin and into our systems.”
Shotgun Sequencing
Hurwitz, who also chairs the UA’s Research Computing Governance Committee and teaches interdisciplinary classes in genetics, statistics, and computational biology in biosystems engineering, works in metagenomics, or the sequencing of the whole communities of microorganisms within a sample. Like humans, microbes don’t operate in a vacuum: They’re affected by their communities of fellow microbes and the environment they live in.
When a doctor swabs a patient’s infection, the swab contains the bacteria from the infection, but it also has bits of human DNA and other organisms mixed in. Using a process called “whole genome shotgun sequencing,” scientists like Hurwitz sequence the entire sample in an effort to understand how communities of organisms work together. Sometimes, for example, viruses can completely reengineer the role of bacteria.