Red 🔴, Blue 🔵 and….Green 🟢? Just in time for July 4, check out our latest publication on the design and evaluation of new fluorescent strains of oral streptococci to use in microscopy applications, such as mixed-species biofilms journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

Kaspar Lab at @aadocr.bsky.social #AADOCR2025 in New York City!!

We are excited and thankful to have received a NoA today from NIDCR on a new R03 examining nutritional niches within oral biofilms. This grant was reviewed last summer and went through council in the fall. Encouraging to see new grants being released given the current circumstances #NIH #OralHealth

Congrats to Izzy Williams and Allen Choi who presented today at The Ohio State Denman Undergraduate Research Forum. Both are seniors, and both are first authors on recent lab publications. Allen will be a D1 at OSU next fall, Izzy looking to apply to dental schools in 2026.

Our award winners from Research Day 2025:
- Nicole Fleming: Alumni Achievement
- Robbie Bettinger: Alumni Merit, 3rd place DDS
- Jarett Pittman: Dentsply SCADA, 2nd place DDS
- Jacob Harris: 1st place PhD
- Lab: Basic Science Paper of the Year for journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...
Congrats!

Kaspar Lab The Ohio State University College of Dentistry Research Day 2025!

This shows how undergrads/dental students can make meaningful research contributions. Unfortunately, with disruptions in NIH funding, my group may not be able to offer these opportunities in the future. Please, continue to support research programs across the US for these students !!

Also assisting with the project were Emily Williams and Madisen Bangs, former undergraduate researchers now in their D1 year at OSU, and Iris Shin a current D2 that made mutants in the summer between undergrad/D1 year. And of course Dan, now in med school at OU in Cleveland.

Jacob, as part of a dental summer research project, tested a pyruvate oxidase mutant that decreases H2O2 production, as well as added catalase, to S. mitis / S. mutans coculture biofilms and determined this is the likely source of biofilm inhibition. Jacob is interested in going into Oral Surgery

Through measuring hydrogen peroxide production, Izzy found this strain produces 5x more H2O2 than any other strain in our collection. Izzy will be presenting in a few weeks at @aadocr.bsky.social in the NSRG Rising Researcher competition and has been an amazing undergrad researcher

In collecting data for another project, we noticed that this strain of S. mitis effectively inhibited S. mutans biofilm formation. A couple students in the lab, Izzy Williams an Ohio State senior, and Jacob Tuckerman, a current D3 dental student, ran with this to find out why

A strain of Streptococcus mitis inhibits biofilm formation of caries pathogens via abundant hydrogen peroxide production | Applied and Environmental Microbiology Antagonistic properties displayed by oral bacteria have been sought as therapeutic approaches against dental caries pathogens like Streptococcus mutans. An emergent theme has been the ability of selec...

Big next few weeks for the lab, showcasing our research - out now in @asm.org AEM is our new study showing a specific strain of S. mitis, ATCC 49456, effectively inhibits caries pathogen biofilm formation though high levels of hydrogen peroxide production! journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

Design, Development and Validation of New Fluorescent Strains for Studying Oral Streptococci Bacterial strains that are genetically engineered to constitutively produce fluorescent proteins have aided our study of bacterial physiology, biofilm formation, and interspecies interactions. Here, w...

Hello Bluesky! Check out our latest research detailing the design, development and validation of new fluorescent strains of oral streptococci! This includes BFP, GFP and RFP variants of S. gordonii, S. mutans and S. sanguinis, used to make our avatar image! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...