Tianna Sullivan, B.Sc

Master Student
Animal Biosciences, University of Guelph

Having grown up in the city of Guelph, I have always been exposed to different facets of the agricultural sector from attending College Royal to visiting the Donkey Sanctuary of Canada. This prompted my interest working with agricultural food animals.I am currently working on my masters by thesis alongside Dr. Niel Karrow and his post-doctoral fellow Dr. Ankita Sharma assessing stress resilience in dairy cattle. My work on this project focuses on microRNA expression changes associated with the innate immune response after a bacterial lipopolysaccharide challenge. In the face of climate change, the dairy industry is seeing an increase in heat and bacterial stress events; one strategy for mitigating the effects of these events is to select for animals that are more resilient to stress. My work in identifying differentially expressed microRNA may be incorporated into breeding programs aimed at selecting stress resilient dairy cattle.

During my master's program I was accepted into the Collaborative One Health Specialization at the Ontario Veterinary College. This specialization has allowed me to approach problems like climate change and antimicrobial resistance in a more holistic way.