At a time where the prevailing paradigm was focused on E. coli as a model organism, Salyers emphasized the importance of investigating the breadth of microbial diversity.

Over the course of her 40-year career, she was presented with numerous awards for teaching and research and an honorary degree from ETH Zurich, and served as president of the American Society for Microbiology.

[1][3][5] Salyers’ microbiome research was based in the study of the physiology of the anaerobic bacterium Bacteroides, with particular regard to their carbohydrate metabolism and their ability to harbor mobile antibiotic resistance genes.

Her lab at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign developed genetic tools that helped to expanded on her earlier research on polysaccharide transport and fermentation in Bacteroidetes.

The many tools that Salyers developed to work with her “funny bugs” and the discoveries she made are responsible for the prominence of Bacteroidetes as a model organism in microbiology today.

[1] Salyers was also president of the board for El Centro, a center that provided help for local Latino migrant workers in Illinois.

[3] Salyer has also provided her expert testimony regarding genetically modified plants and antibiotic use in agriculture to several regulatory agencies in the U.S. and Europe.