Nayduch and a team of four graduate students and three undergraduate students have been conducting laboratory experiments on house flies by infecting them with bacteria and then dissecting the insects (with tiny scissors!) to determine the fate of those bacteria inside the flies’ digestive tracts.

Nayduch is working with six human pathogens, including E. coli O157:H7, which contaminates beef products and causes food poisoning, and even death, in children; Staphylococcus aureus, which harbors antibiotic resistance and can cause deadly infections; and Streptococcus pyogenes, the “flesh-eating bacterium” that causes strep throat and diseases such as scarlet fever.

The bacteria are labeled with a green-fluorescent beacon so they can be tracked inside the flies. By determining when and where the bacteria are within the flies, Nayduch and her team can assess the insects’ potential as disease vectors.

Learning more about how flies spread disease could be a huge benefit for developing countries where homes do not have screens and insects have access to raw sewage, Nayduch said. Closer to home, the knowledge will benefit workers and companies in agriculture and pest control.

Nayduch and her team also are looking at how house flies ingesting the bacteria are able to live and thrive in an environment where few other organisms could stand a chance.

“We’re looking at the immune response: Why don’t these pathogens kill the fly? How are they resistant to these organisms?” Nayduch said. “If we can discover which parts of the fly’s immune defenses are involved in their apparent resistance to disease, we may just reveal an Achilles’ heel.”

The team expects to share some findings from this research by the end of this year.