{"id":29129,"date":"2019-03-05T08:54:45","date_gmt":"2019-03-05T13:54:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rinsfepscor\/?p=29129"},"modified":"2019-08-23T09:55:15","modified_gmt":"2019-08-23T13:55:15","slug":"hungry-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rinsfepscor\/2019\/03\/05\/hungry-science\/","title":{"rendered":"Hungry Science"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"ReidKula\"
Dr. Chris Reid instructs Krystyna Kula on Bryant’s gas chromatography equipment.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When Krystyna Kula<\/strong> was a child, she learned first-hand about Narragansett Bay as a volunteer for Save The Bay. This past summer, the Rhode Island native returned from her undergraduate institution, the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, to work with Bryant University\u2019s Dr. Christopher Reid<\/strong>, studying how microorganisms transport carbon and other nutrients into larger species.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t really know right now how carbon moves through the food chain,\u201d explained Kula, a biology major. \u201cWe are feeding isotopically labeled carbon to yeast, which will then be fed to a dinoflagellate plankton. That will help us see how carbon moves through the food chain.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kula collaborated with SURF mentors Dr. Tatiana Rynearson<\/strong> and Dr. Susanne Menden-Deuer<\/strong>, to complete her research at the University of Rhode Island\u2019s Graduate School of Oceanography, learning how to culture the zooplankton Oxyrrhis marina<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The end goal, said Reid, is to better understand how hydrocarbons, called \u2018lipids,\u2019 travel through ingestion from the tiniest zooplankton to economically important species such as shellfish, a process known as \u2018trophic upgrading\u2019.<\/p>\n

For Kula, her first experience in a research lab was much different from the classroom as she learned to use equipment such as a gas-chromatography machine to separate and identify chemicals from water samples.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn class, you learn for the test and forget about it, but this is something that has an actual application to the real world,\u201d she said. \u201cThis experience is a good look at how it would be if research was my job day-to-day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reid, who hosts a small group of undergraduate and graduate researchers at Bryant, has always tried to foster a friendly working environment through which students can learn together.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was a little bit nervous coming in,\u201d admitted Kula, now a sophomore at Notre Dame. \u201cBut everyone was really welcoming and helping me with how everything works in the lab.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although she has a few years before deciding on graduate school, Kula knows the experience will serve her well.<\/p>\n

\u201cI took this past summer to figure out if this was something I could do every day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of Chlorophyll and Plankton<\/h2>\n

When Christopher Jenkins<\/strong> first arrived at the University of Rhode Island\u2019s Bay Campus from Shoreview, Minn., his goal was to pursue research related to zoo keeping. Then he discovered Narragansett Bay through scuba diving.<\/p>\n

\"Jenkins\"
Chris Jenkins explains his day as a SURF student, including operation of Dr. Colleen Mouw’s ImageFlow Cytobot, which collects thousands of highly detailed images of the plankton in Narragansett Bay.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cI came here and didn\u2019t do anything involved with a zoo at all,\u201d laughed Jenkins, a marine biology major working with Dr. Colleen Mouw<\/strong>, assistant professor at URI\u2019s Graduate School of Oceanography. \u201cI\u2019ve wanted to get a good work ethic and well-rounded experience, as this is something I have never really done before.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jenkins gathered information about \u2018absorption\u2019 properties of phytoplankton, or the amount of light they intake. This data allows scientists, explained Jenkins, to identify the occurrence and abundance of specific species in the bay.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you have a sample of water, or anything, you have light going through it,\u201d he said at the time. \u201cThe floor, for example, has a very high absorption value because you can\u2019t see through it. The idea is we want to look at a water sample and find the absorption patterns that correlate to specific species.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jenkins traveled frequently between the shore and lab throughout summer, collecting water and sediment samples and then navigating lab equipment to gather meaningful data about the bay\u2019s various organisms.<\/p>\n

\u201cMeasuring samples is a pretty tedious process,\u201d said Jenkins. \u201cIn the lab, I put water samples in acetone and then \u2018sonicate\u2019 them, or blast them with sound waves, which breaks open the cells so the phytoplankton chlorophyll pigments are exposed and we can read them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a steep learning curve,\u201d the marine biology major continued. \u201cWhen you are in the lab, you have to be able to make sure you are organized and know which step to take and when.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jenkins, who continues to advance this work during the academic year in RI C-AIM’s SURF+ program, is looking to finish his degree a year early with a view towards graduate school. His goals for the summer SURF experience, however, were a bit humbler.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really like being able to say I can take a good sample and take care of a machine and not have it break on me,\u201d he said with a smile.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Krystyna Kula and Chris Jenkins explore the bay’s food webs through its tiniest creatures: plankton<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1994,"featured_media":24445,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[888],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-current-winter-19"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rinsfepscor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rinsfepscor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rinsfepscor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rinsfepscor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1994"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rinsfepscor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29129"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rinsfepscor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29129\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33017,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rinsfepscor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29129\/revisions\/33017"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rinsfepscor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rinsfepscor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rinsfepscor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rinsfepscor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}