{"id":26814,"date":"2023-06-12T08:30:59","date_gmt":"2023-06-12T12:30:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/biology.mit.edu\/?p=26814"},"modified":"2023-06-10T13:01:25","modified_gmt":"2023-06-10T17:01:25","slug":"mit-alum-filling-in-the-gaps-in-urology-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/biology.mit.edu\/mit-alum-filling-in-the-gaps-in-urology-research\/","title":{"rendered":"MIT alum filling in the gaps in urology research"},"content":{"rendered":"
There were early signs that Nicole De Nisco,<\/span> SB \u201807, PhD \u201813, might become a scientist. She ran out of science classes to take in high school and fondly remembers the teacher that encouraged her to pursue science instead of the humanities. But she ended up at MIT, in part, out of spite.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI applied because my guidance counselor told me I wouldn\u2019t get in,\u201d she said. The rest, as they say, is history for the first-generation college student from Los Angeles.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Now, she\u2019s an assistant professor of biological sciences at UT Dallas studying urinary tract infections (UTIs) and the urinary microbiome in postmenopausal women.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n De Nisco has already made some important advancements in the field: she developed a new technique for visualizing bacteria in the bladder and used it to demonstrate that bacteria form reservoirs in human bladder tissue, leading to chronic or recurrent UTIs.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n It was known that in mice, bacteria are able to create communities within the bladder tissue, forming reservoirs and staying there long term\u2014but no one had shown that occurring in human tissue before.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n