Avelina Espinosa
Roger Williams University
Associate professor, biology
SURF program mentor

Avelina Espinosa’s research takes her deep inside the gut, looking at a parasite ingested by people through either water or food. The question, she says, is how would this parasite — Entamoeba — respond to climate change?

From her biomedical research with the human pathogen, Espinosa says she knew the organisms communicated by excreting proteins. These single cell organisms can discriminate between relatives and non-relatives to maximize survival.

Under the Rhode Island NSF EPSCoR grant, Espinosa’s investigation focuses on the chemical signaling that takes place at the unicellular level and what transpires when there is environmental stress.

Understanding the ecological interaction between different groups of microbes, the healthy versus the pathogenic ones, can bring better management of marine ecosystem health. 

“What we found was that amebas do change and can grow better with higher acidity, higher salinity and higher temperature,” she reports. “So, this suggests that if conditions change, we would have changes in infectious agents both for animal and human populations.”

That means, as conditions evolve — temperatures rise, levels of water acidity and salinity grow — they will affect the behavior of these single-celled organisms, which, in turn, may warrant a change in planning for and responding to disease.

Looking ahead to where the research might lead, Espinosa says understanding the ecological interaction between different groups of microbes, the healthy versus the pathogenic ones, can bring better management of marine ecosystem health. Greater insight also will allow science to naturally manage infectious disease rather than through drugs and compounds.

Espinosa also is involved with RI EPSCoR’s Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) program and weaves her work into her mentoring, training students as they assist with research, gain new skills, and explore the science. The exposure and the impact on students at a Primarily Undergraduate Institution (PUI) are life changing, says Espinosa.

For example, she cites Josh Leitao of the SURF 2013 class, who went onto earn a fellowship — one of 43 students nationwide — from the American Society of Microbiology.

He received an American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology 2015 Award and the International Society of Protistologists 2014 Award, also collecting “Best Presentation About Single Cell Organisms.” Leitao presented his research at the American Chemical Society National Meeting and Exposition in Denver, Colorado, and other national meetings. And, he has been accepted at Johns Hopkins for a Master’s Degree in microbiology.

“The mentorship is integrated with the research,” Espinosa says. “At Roger Williams University, the approach we have is that we do the work, but the students are an essential part of it.”

Story and photo by Amy Dunkle | RI NSF EPSCoR