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Claudia K. Gunsch

Muriel Theodorsen Williams E'46 Distinguished Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Civil and Environmental Engineering
Box 90287, Durham, NC 27708-0287
225 Wilkinson Building, Durham, NC 27708

Selected Publications


Evaluation of Pesticides on Detritus-Inhabiting and Root-Associated Fungi in Aquatic Habitats and Potential Implications

Journal Article Diversity · May 1, 2024 Pesticide contamination of aquatic ecosystems poses a significant threat to humans and can adversely affect fungal-driven processes in these understudied habitats. Here, we investigated the effects of four pesticides on detritus-inhabiting and plant root-a ... Full text Cite

Soil exposure modulates the immune response to an influenza challenge in a mouse model.

Journal Article Sci Total Environ · April 20, 2024 There is increasing evidence that early life microbial exposure aids in immune system maturation, more recently known as the "old friends" hypothesis. To test this hypothesis, 4-week-old mice were exposed to soils of increasing microbial diversity for four ... Full text Link to item Cite

Advances in Graduate Training in Integrative Bioinformatics for Investigating and Engineering Microbiomes (IBIEM)

Conference ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, Conference Proceedings · June 25, 2023 Innovations by engineers and physical scientists working at the frontiers of microbiome engineering and discovery requires in-depth understanding of microbiome systems with parallel skills in bioinformatics and biostatistics. Despite the importance of inte ... Cite

The effect of bacterial growth strategies on plasmid transfer and naphthalene degradation for bioremediation.

Journal Article Environmental technology & innovation · November 2022 Mobilizable plasmids are extra-chromosomal, circular DNA that have contributed to the rapid evolution of bacterial genomes and have been used in environmental, biotechnological, and medicinal applications. Degradative plasmids with genetic capabilities to ... Cite

Complete Genome Sequence of NAH7-Harboring Pseudomonas putida Strain G7.

Journal Article Microbiology resource announcements · October 2022 Pseudomonas putida G7 (111) is an aerobic bacterial species discovered in soil known to harbor the naphthalene-degrading NAH7 plasmid. Here, we report the genome sequence of G7. The genome was assembled by Nanopore sequencing and consisted of a chromosome ... Full text Cite

Predictive values of time-dense SARS-CoV-2 wastewater analysis in university campus buildings.

Journal Article The Science of the total environment · August 2022 Wastewater-based SARS-CoV-2 surveillance on college campuses has the ability to detect individual clinical COVID-19 cases at the building-level. High concordance of wastewater results and clinical cases has been observed when calculated over a time window ... Full text Cite

Evaluation of developing maize microbiomes and associations among nitrogen cyclers and key fungal taxa.

Journal Article Microbiology (Reading, England) · March 2022 More sustainable approaches to agriculture are urgently needed to protect existing resources and optimize crop yields and to provide food for a growing global human population. More sustainable agricultural practices that utilize plant-microbe relationship ... Full text Cite

Alterations of endophytic microbial community function in Spartina alterniflora as a result of crude oil exposure.

Journal Article Biodegradation · February 2022 The 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster remains one of the largest oil spills in history. This event caused significant damage to coastal ecosystems, the full extent of which has yet to be fully determined. Crude oil contains toxic heavy metals and substances ... Full text Cite

Identifying bioaugmentation candidates for bioremediation of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in contaminated estuarine sediment of the Elizabeth River, VA, USA.

Journal Article Applied microbiology and biotechnology · February 2022 Estuarine sediments near former creosoting facilities along the Elizabeth River (Virginia, USA) are contaminated by polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). In this study, we interrogated the bacterial community of the Elizabeth River with both culture-bas ... Full text Cite

Evaluation of the mycobiome of ballast water and implications for fungal pathogen distribution

Journal Article Aquatic Microbial Ecology · January 1, 2022 Marine transport has the potential to alter the geographic range of microorganisms through ballast water movement. Recent culture-independent studies investigated the bacteriome of ballast water, but no prior studies have examined the mycobiome. Here were ... Full text Cite

Decay of oil residues in the soil is enhanced by the presence of Spartina alterniflora, with no additional effect from microbiome manipulation

Journal Article Frontiers in Soil Science · January 1, 2022 Recent work has suggested that the phytoremediation potential of S. alterniflora may be linked to a selection by the plant for oil-degrading microbial communities in the soil, in combination with enhanced delivery of oxygen and plant enzymes to the soil. I ... Full text Cite

Properties affecting transfer and expression of degradative plasmids for the purpose of bioremediation.

Journal Article Biodegradation · August 2021 Plasmids, circular DNA that exist and replicate outside of the host chromosome, have been important in the spread of non-essential genes as well as the rapid evolution of prokaryotes. Recent advances in environmental engineering have aimed to utilize the m ... Full text Cite

The role of gut microbial community and metabolomic shifts in adaptive resistance of Atlantic killifish (Fundulus heteroclitus) to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.

Journal Article The Science of the total environment · July 2021 Altered gut microbiomes may play a role in rapid evolution to anthropogenic change but remain poorly understood. Atlantic killifish (Fundulus heteroclitus) in the Elizabeth River, VA have evolved resistance to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and pr ... Full text Cite

Fungal Planet description sheets: 1182-1283.

Journal Article Persoonia · June 2021 Novel species of fungi described in this study include those from various countries as follows: Algeria, Phaeoacremonium adelophialidum from Vitis vinifera.Antarctica, Comoclathris antarctica from soil. Australia, ... Full text Cite

The Gut/Lung Microbiome Axis in Obesity, Asthma, and Bariatric Surgery: A Literature Review.

Journal Article Obesity (Silver Spring) · April 2021 Mounting evidence suggests that obesity, parameters of metabolic syndrome, and asthma are significantly associated. Interestingly, these conditions are also associated with microbiome dysbiosis, notably in the airway microbiome for patients with asthma and ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

The environment shapes swine lung bacterial communities.

Journal Article Sci Total Environ · March 1, 2021 Previous studies of the lung microbiome have focused on characterizing the community and attempts to understand the role of community membership concerning disease or exposures such as cigarette smoke. However, we still lack an understanding of two critica ... Full text Link to item Cite

Exposures to Semivolatile Organic Compounds in Indoor Environments and Associations with the Gut Microbiomes of Children

Journal Article Environmental Science and Technology Letters · January 12, 2021 Semivolatile organic compounds (SVOCs) are widely detected in many indoor environments due to their frequent use in building materials, textiles, furniture, electronics, and other consumer products. Biomarkers of SVOC exposures have been consistently measu ... Full text Cite

Investigating the mycobiome of the Holcomb Creosote Superfund Site.

Journal Article Chemosphere · August 2020 Even though many fungi are known to degrade a range of organic chemicals and may be advantageous for targeting hydrophobic chemicals with low bioavailability due to their ability to secrete extracellular enzymes, fungi are not commonly leveraged in the con ... Full text Cite

A novel PCR-clamping assay reducing plant host DNA amplification significantly improves prokaryotic endo-microbiome community characterization.

Journal Article FEMS microbiology ecology · July 2020 Due to the sequence homology between the bacterial 16S rRNA gene and plant chloroplast and mitochondrial DNA, the taxonomic characterization of plant microbiome using amplicon-based high throughput sequencing often results in the overwhelming presence of p ... Full text Cite

Long-Term Effects of Copper Nanopesticides on Soil and Sediment Community Diversity in Two Outdoor Mesocosm Experiments.

Journal Article Environmental science & technology · July 2020 The use of novel pesticides containing nanomaterials (nanopesticides) is growing and is considered a promising approach to reduce the impacts of agriculture on the environment and human health. However, the environmental effects of these novel agrochemical ... Full text Cite