Thomas Meedel
Rhode Island College
Professor; biology
SURF program mentor

Throughout much of the Rhode Island EPSCoR grant, Thomas Meedel’s key involvement has been as a mentor for the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) program.

A 2015 RI Science and Technology Advisory Council (STAC) collaborative grant with lead researcher Steve Irvine and Niall Howlett, both of University of Rhode Island, added a new layer, tapping into his work as a developmental biologist with sea squirts — Ciona intestinalis.

“Basically we’re interested in seeing how these animals respond to climate change,” Meedel says. “They are an important part of the ecology of places like Narragansett Bay, where they exist in large numbers. As filter feeders, they have an important impact on plankton in the water column.”

Specifically, the researchers will look at the proteins, which Meedel describes as the workhorses of the cell that carry out and regulate most cellular activity. The question is how do those proteins, and consequently their activities change at different water temperatures?

The team has set up aquaria at the seawater facility in the Marine Science Research Facility (MSRF), a RI EPSCoR core facility on the URI Bay Campus, exposing the sea squirts to water temperatures of 14-, 18-, and 22-degree Celsius. In addition to analyzing the protein composition of animals raised in these different conditions, the researchers also examine their reproductive and developmental health.

The expectation is that the sea squirts from Narragansett Bay will be better suited to the warmer temperatures than those from the Gulf of Maine, which have adapted to colder water. The contrast will provide a good indication of how the species will respond to predicted climate change scenarios.

Meedel says there is no clear-cut answer to whether sea squirts are good or bad; they have qualities that make them both beneficial and harmful. An invasive species — Didemnum vexillum — native to the Pacific is now found throughout the Northeast. Meedel says they often grow in large, gooey, gelatinous mats that can destroy shellfish beds and fish spawning grounds. Ciona, too, is not native to the northeastern United States, but they have been around here for so long that most people don’t consider them to be invasive.

Professor Thomas Meedel says EPSCoR research also provides an exceptional training ground through the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship program: “SURF broadens their education and exposes them to ways of thinking that they don’t typically get in their coursework. Too many students have such low expectations of what they can accomplish. SURF demonstrates to them what they are capable of.”

Ciona are not considered an economically important species, so people often ask Meedel why he studies them. He typically explains that there are many reasons for his focus, but for this particular project they serve as the proverbial canary in the coal mine. If Ciona can’t adapt to changing conditions, then other filter feeders could face a similar fate. In other words, the coal mine is not a good place to be when the canary dies.

Scientists also find the sea squirt a valuable organism to study because it is among the best available in terms of resources, like a completed genome, to use, according to Meedel.

“We can combine that sort of resource with the peptide fragments our study generates to identify the proteins being expressed under different conditions and you can’t do that with just anything,” he says. “Also, the methods we develop in our studies should be applicable to studying how the protein composition of other marine organisms responds to predicted climate change.”

In addition to the ongoing research, Meedel considers the EPSCoR SURF program one of grant’s best works. Often times, the fellowship opportunity does not register on students’ radar, yet it evolves into a transformational life event. Meedel says he commonly hears from students that they never expected to have such a research experience during their undergraduate years.

Working on an open-ended research project rather than a proscribed lab exercise engages students in a different type of intellectual pursuit than they are used to, says Meedel. And, the fellowship pays a stipend so they can focus on the science and don’t have to take on an additional job for financial support.

“SURF broadens their education and exposes them to ways of thinking that they don’t typically get in their coursework,” he says. “Too many students have such low expectations of what they can accomplish. SURF demonstrates to them what they are capable of.”

Story and photo by Amy Dunkle | RI NSF EPSCoR