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AgResearch senior scientist Tanushree Gupta at work. When she first got word of an award being bestowed on her, she thought it was a scam.
A scientist in Manawatū says it was a “true honour” to win a prestigious award for her microbiology research.
AgResearch senior scientist Tanushree Gupta received the Basil Jarvis Prize at the Applied Microbiology Awards, which was presented to her in London.
It is awarded to a microbiologist at an early or mid-career stage who has made a “significant contribution to the field of food safety, food fermentations and food security”.
Gupta is a researcher in the AgResearch Food System Integrity team based at the Hopkirk Research Institute in Palmerston North.
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The recognition capped off a memorable year for Gupta, who said: “I am very thankful to Applied Microbiology International for honouring me with the Basil Jarvis Prize. He was a great microbiologist and I, myself, have read his books. This is a true honour.”
Gupta thought news of the award was initially a scam.
The microbiologist had only recently returned from a long-overdue catch-up with family in India and was recovering from jet lag and a travel bug.
“I was still sick and not really thinking straight. I read that e-mail and I just closed it off thinking this must be a scam. Then when I just got my mind sorted……I did some investigating.”
CARLY THOMAS/STUFF
Tanushree Gupta runs an Indian dance academy in Palmerston North. (First published April, 2018)
The email address checked out and was followed by another a few days later saying, not only was she a finalist, she’d won.
“I couldn’t believe it and needed to look at [Applied Microbiology International’s] Facebook and LinkedIn pages and through a few people profiles before I’d let myself think maybe it was legitimate.”
Gupta broke the news to her team leader, Dr Gale Brightwell, and they discovered the award came with an all-expenses paid trip to the ceremony in London.
Within a few days of thinking she was being scammed, she was rubbing shoulders with the best microbiologists in the world at the Science Museum in swanky south Kensington.
The award confirmed Gupta’s rising star status in the world of microbiology, and how her work has advanced the understanding of microbiologists across the world.
A few years ago, she and her team became aware of the shortcomings in some of the internationally accepted and published bacterial testing regimes they were using, particularly in a dairy environment.
The “text book” method to distinguish anaerobes and aerobic bacteria wasn’t effective in a New Zealand farm context. Bacteria (bacillus) were surviving the commonly accepted two-day incubation period. Samples of what were assumed to be Clostridium bacteria were in fact a mixture of the two.
“This raised the question that perhaps a natural anti-bacterial might be involved at some stage in the method. That a specific group of anaerobic species were able to produce some secondary metabolites as part of their metabolism.
“We started isolating those anaerobic species and then whole genome sequencing them. Through a lot of hard work we found the specific anaerobic bacteria that were untouched, that had the ability to produce antibacterial and antifungal metabolites, thanks to our new method.”
WARWICK SMITH/Stuff
Tanushree Gupta instructing students of her weekly Bollywood dance class at Rangiora Hall in Palmerston North.
Gupta said publishing their findings helped change the understanding of how bacteria interacts and had opened up research into new applications of antibacterial and antifungal metabolites.
More work needed to be done. But there were several applications now to be explored in packaging and preventing food spoilage.
Gupta also runs the Shree Dance Academy in Palmerston North and is trained in the traditional Indian style of Kathak, a storytelling form of dance that finds its origins in ancient mythology through movement, song and music.
“I’m quite lucky that I am living a life of two passions that I really love. One is science and one is dance.”
She has exciting new avenues to explore looking at enzymes that can chew or degrade plastics and a collaboration using CRISPR technology to develop new methodologies to detect food pathogens and spoilage organisms in food.
Greg Ford is a former journalist and communications specialist for AgResearch.
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