Anna Burleson，营销与传播

Professor Michele Culumber stands in a Tracy Hall lab surrounded by WSU students in white lab coats writing what seem like basic instructions on the white board: “1. 拭子,2。 倒,3。 Label.”

一小群学生很快开始检查试管中的样本。

You wouldn’t know by watching them, but students in Culumber’s microbiology under新葡京app research team are studying something universally beloved, delicious and great with crackers: cheese.

Earlier in the day, most of the group had been at local company 蜂巢奶酪 collecting samples for study to find out what’s causing cheese to release carbon dioxide, puffing up grocery store packaging industry-wide and making it difficult to sell.

虽然很难看，但谢天谢地，味道没有受到影响。

In 2015, then WSU microbiology professor Craig Oberg BS ’79 discovered the bacteria Paucilactobacillus wasatchensis, the cause of the puffing. Paucilactobacillus is Latin for a genus of lactic acid bacteria, and wasatchensis describes its discovery in northern Utah, at the base of the Wasatch Range. Oberg wasn’t even looking for it, and noticed it purely by chance.

“Most great discoveries aren’t ‘Eureka!’ they’re like, ‘That’s a weird thing; let’s look at it,’” he said.

Culumber研究了地下水中的微生物，这些微生物可以降解汽油，夏威夷土壤，泥炭沼泽，大盐湖，甚至是缓步动物，通常被称为水熊。

她对一个新课题很感兴趣，在奥伯格发现后就与他合作。

“He’s like, ‘I isolated this little bacterium, and I need help figuring out what it is,’” Culumber recalled. “So, we sequenced its genetic material, and it didn’t match up with anything known. It was a new organism, and we just went from there.”

自从发现这种细菌以来，Culumber已经和学生们一起工作了大约8年，研究细菌是如何使奶酪包装变得如此不吸引人的，以及如何阻止它。

It’s a slow, methodical process of elimination with many variables.

学生们从剪线钳、大桶、排水管，甚至工人们拿卫生手套的纸板箱，以及与奶酪制作过程有关的任何东西上收集样本。

Culumber’s running theory is that normally this bacterium would eat five-carbon sugar molecules, but the molecules are not common in cheese, so the bacteria break down six-carbon sugars and release carbon dioxide.

But that’s just a theory.

卡伦伯说，这种特殊的研究很容易找到想要参与的学生，因为食物很容易接近。 他们还在项目的各个方面获得经验，从计划和研究到展示结果。

“Our goal is to provide the students with the opportunity to learn some skills and see if they want to pursue this industry for their careers,” she said.

布鲁克林马修斯 她是华盛顿州立大学的大三学生，与卡伦伯一起工作，计划于2024年春季毕业。 She originally thought she might want to work with animals but has transitioned to studying what she calls “tiny animals,” aka microbiology.

她喜欢研究奶酪，但也对流行病学感兴趣。

“It’s cool how things spoil, how they infect things and how they spread,” she said as she looked at a test tube containing a small amount of cheese in liquid.

为了研究奶酪制作过程的每一步，Culumber还与BUILD Dairy项目合作，该项目将韦伯州立大学和犹他州立大学等大学的学生和教师与乳制品行业和农民联系起来，进行互利的研究。

“If it’s coming in with the raw milk, maybe there’s a way to alter the pasteurization process,” she said. “If it’s coming in from some other contaminant or it’s just in the plant already, then maybe they have to do some different cleaning techniques. Maybe there’s an additive they could use to control it.”

The ongoing research on Paucilactobacillus wasatchensis has received global attention. Oberg, WSU professor emeritus, presented findings from WSU research on the bacteria at the 14th 国际乳酸菌研讨会 in the Netherlands in August 2023.

“It has been an unbelievable feather in 新葡京app State’s cap,” Oberg said.

Britton Welsh MBA ’16, 蜂巢奶酪的总裁说，该公司很自豪能与韦伯州立大学合作，试图解决这个问题。

“It’s not harmful to people; it’s just a little unsightly,” he said.

While Beehive’s cheese is safe to eat up to 80 新葡京apps, Welsh said packaging will start to puff if it gets hotter than 50 新葡京apps for a few hours. This hasn’t impacted profits to speak of so far, but they have to put in extra effort to stay on top of the problem and keep the cheese cool.

“It’s really annoying,” Welsh said. “It’s not bad per se, but it adds a lot of variables to our lives.”