School of Biology graduate student Justin Burns was named a winner of the 2009 SAIC Georgia Tech Student Paper Competition, for his paper "Anaerobic respiration of elemental sulfur and thiosulfate by Shewanella oneidensis MR-1 requires psrA, a homolog of the phsA gene of Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium LT2". This paper, which includes Biology Professor Tom DiChristina as coauthor, appeared in the August 2009 issue of the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology.

In this paper, Burns and DiChristina identified a gene required for respiration of elemental sulfur and thiosulfate in Shewanella oneidensis MR-1 and subsequently confirmed its function via application of a newly constructed gene deletion system. Respiration of elemental sulfur is closely linked to iron respiration and may represent one of the first respiratory processes to evolve on early earth. The gene deletion system described in this paper alleviates many problems associated with previous genetic methods in Shewanella and allows for greater efficiency in constructing and testing mutant strains. S. oneidensis MR-1 is an attractive model organism for studying anaerobic respiratory processes, including those required for bioremediation of contaminant radionuclides at U.S. Department of Energy sites.