Mentor: Christopher Reid (Bryant University)

Project Location

Bryant University

Project Description

The microzooplankton, Oxyrrhis marina, will serve as a model for the development of an in situ living biosensor for Narragansett Bay. As a tightly integrated and naturally occurring component of the Narragansett Bay ecosystem and given the extent of scientific literature on the ecology of the organism, O. marina is ideally suited to serve as a model protist. Changes to surface glycan composition in other biological systems have been demonstrated in response to disease and stress conditions. We will develop technology to read out these glycan “barcode” biomarkers of health—a vital step given their resistance to analysis by conventional means let alone in real-time. This will create a sophisticated environmental analog of early disease diagnosis by biomarker detection and reveal more insight—to the molecular level—than can be had by population number tracking. There is broad environmental significance, e.g. from the level of nutrient and carbon availability to organismal and food network health, as well as for downstream economic and even biomedical outcomes.

This project involves:

• lab work

Available for SURF Flex?

Yes

Required/preferred skills

Completeion of general chemistry & intro biology lecture/lab

Transportation needs

Travel to URI to work with collaborators at GSO and URI to obtain, prepare, samples for metabolic labeling and analyze using nanopore sensors.

2022