“A lot of the early studies that were done on the bacteria that are found in the vagina, they did sort of a biased sampling. They tended to study women who were white and not women of color, for example. And so, we did a study funded by the National Institutes of Health in which we collected samples from 400 different women, and they were from four different ethnic groups; there were Black women, Hispanic women, Asian women and white women. And we wanted to see how much variation was there in the kinds of bacteria that you find within each one of those demographic groups but also between those groups. And what we found was that there were five different kinds of communities that we could identify. That right there debunked a long-held idea that most women had pretty much the same kinds of bacteria and that they didn’t change over time. And it didn’t matter what your ethnicity was. And it turns out that all those things aren’t true.”

Meet Larry Forney (bit.ly/3mfZuxx), a university distinguished professor in the Department of Biological Sciences (bit.ly/3uf2Y6a) at the University of Idaho. There are still many unanswered questions about female reproductive health, including understanding the community of microbes that live in the vagina. Through Larry’s work, scientists are even starting to question whether what they consider a “healthy vaginal microbiome” can be easily defined.

Visit our website uidaho.edu/vandaltheory. Email us at [email protected].

Learn about Idaho’s premier research university, University of Idaho, at uidaho.edu.

More U of I Research:
Two students, Nick Pancheri and Peik Lund-Andersen, have received Goldwater Scholarship awards for the 2021-22 academic year from the Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation. Nick researches tendon tissue engineering, and Peik investigates the susceptibility of animal species to COVID-19. (bit.ly/3g7V0Iw).

Senior Madison Thurston worked with the Moscow-based nonprofit TerraGraphics International Foundation on a geospatial analysis of a 2010 lead poisoning event in Nigeria. The study demonstrated that neighborhood size, variation in lead levels and the location of lead waste impact a child’s exposure, which can result in lead poisonings. (bit.ly/3mdwO8g).

Beer brewing uses the hops flower while the remaining plant is often mulched into compost. But what if the hops waste could be used for something else? Agricultural and Life Sciences student Maggie Zee has already figured out how to process the hops’ leftovers into paper and is working on making it into a textile. (bit.ly/3mbqKxa).

Music:
“Young Republicans” by Steve Combs (bit.ly/2PsMCpw) via freemusicarchive.org, not modified (bit.ly/2Ju7MQb).

“Amber Glow” by Scott Holmes Music (bit.ly/3udiOyf) via freemusicarchive.org, not modified (bit.ly/2PpJehz).

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