Brittanie Peake grew up in southern Oklahoma City in a single parent household. She had no experience in the agricultural field, but she felt drawn to the Oklahoma State University (OSU) Ferguson College of Agriculture the moment she stepped foot on campus.
“I had no agricultural background, but because the ag college was so small, I just fell in love with it,” Peake said.
She had no idea her time at Stillwater would lead her down her current career path.
“I did animal science for my undergrad,” Peake said. “I originally planned on going into veterinary medicine, but that just wasn’t the path I needed to go down.”
Three months after her undergraduate graduation in 2015, Peake married her high school sweetheart, James.
For the next five years, Peake, a Chickasaw citizen, worked at the Oklahoma Animal Disease Diagnostics Lab (OADDL) in Stillwater as a senior laboratory technician and eventually as a laboratory supervisor specializing in molecular diagnostics. However, when the COVID-19 pandemic occurred, her office quickly became a testing station.
“I tell people, ‘Don’t ask me what happened in 2020,’ because I have no idea,” Peake said.
Peake said her laboratory was already well-equipped for high-input agricultural testing using specific polymerase chain reaction (PCR) equipment. Asked to switch their operation into a COVID-19 testing facility from March to September 2020, OADDL happily obliged.
The work was grueling. Peake’s job changed from eight-hour shifts Monday through Friday to persistent work, often late into the night and into the weekends.
“It’s because of going through that, working almost 100-hour pay periods, I had the thought, ‘If I can do this, why can’t I do grad school?’” she said.
Peake enrolled back into OSU and joined the Comparative Biomedical Sciences Graduate Program. It took her three years to graduate from the program as she was also working full time.
“Even though I didn’t go down the vet school road, I still really loved the veterinary world,” Peake said. “I was interested in animal diseases, specifically. Going into this program meant I would have mentorship and work with veterinary professionals with backgrounds in animal disease research.”
When choosing her thesis, Peake already had an idea in mind.
“In 2017, when I was working at the disease lab, I was volunteered to be a part of this project with Johne’s disease,” she said.
Johne’s disease is a chronic, highly contagious bacterial infection that affects the small intestines of ruminant livestock such as cattle, sheep and goats. The disease often leads to vast fatalities among an entire herd.
Peake said her 2017 project placed her at a local goat farm infected with Johne’s disease. After learning to use the Johne’s disease testing kits, Peake was able to collect samples from the goats, take the samples back to the lab and test for the disease. She placed her findings into a presentation that was later exhibited at an American Association of Veterinary Laboratory Diagnosticians conference.
However, 2020 halted her studies. The faculty member helping her fund the project retired. Her entry into graduate school gave her an opportunity to continue diving into the world of Johne’s disease.
Peake said she chose to only study Johne’s disease in goats, as goats have little Johne’s disease research documentation. Research is more common in cattle herds.
“Our plan was to start out being very descriptive,” Peake said regarding her thesis. “What does it do to the body in general?”
Johne’s disease affects goats differently from other ruminants. Often, clinical signs are more difficult to detect.
“They are just these funny little animals that nothing happens the way it's supposed to happen,” Peake said. “Because the disease doesn't affect them correctly, for lack of a better term, they're very rarely looked at and studied.”
The disease acts in four stages: silent, subclinical, clinical and advanced. To test for Johne’s disease, a feces sample must be collected. Often, a diagnosis cannot be confirmed in goats until the advanced stage of the infection, when the animal is in its final, terminal stage.
Peake said she also began to realize how costly testing was. Farmers and ranchers with infected herds often cannot afford to test entire populations.
With both of these thoughts in mind, her studies focused on understanding the mechanisms of the disease in hopes to offer the potential for earlier diagnostic detection and more accurate disease control in the future.
Peake was able to shorten her thesis defense into a PowerPoint presentation that she gladly presented at the 2024 American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES) National Conference in San Antonio, Texas. She received an honorable mention award for best oral graduate speech at the conference. With more than 3,500 attendees and 250 exhibitors, it is the largest college and career fair within Indian Country.
“I had never been around so many people with similar backgrounds as me and loved science the way I did,” Peake said regarding the AISES National Conference.
Peake graduated from OSU with her master’s in comparative biomedical sciences in December 2024. She is using the wealth of knowledge she gained in the classroom and on the farm in her current job as an assistant scientist at Fort Environmental Laboratories Inc.
Fort Environmental Laboratories Inc. is an environmental toxicology laboratory and consulting firm focusing on the study of amphibians, reptiles and fish.
“It’s very different from what I am used to,” she said. “I had never worked with aquatic animals before this job.”
Peake still sees a future working in mammal infectious diseases.
“Even though I love my job, I have such a passion for animal diseases,” Peake said. “It’s so fascinating. To be able to go back into that world would be amazing.”