Academic Major: Biology
Title: Is the Adirondack Community Under A-"salt"
Current news suggests that road salt is having a significantly harmful impact on aquatic insects that inhabit streams and lakes surrounding the roads. In the Adirondack community, this effect may be especially pronounced due to the organism diversity and long winters. I would like to study these harmful effects. Though my career goals focus on medicine, I chose to come to SUNY Potsdam due to the beautiful environment. My goal is to contribute to overall preservation efforts that look to maintain the landscape and the diverse organisms that inhabit it. The methods involved in this study will include PCR, qPCR, DNA extraction, DNA sequencing, and toxicological experiments. These techniques will be used first on Drosophila melanogaster. Drosophila will act as a model organism. We will first extract DNA and use PCR and/or qPCR to amplify genes. qPCR allows us to see the amplification in real time and will allow us to see if particular genes or metabolic pathways are being upregulated or downregulated due to salt exposure. The genes or pathways of interest will translate to another aquatic organism which we plan to collect and conduct a toxicological experiment on. This experiment will determine the lethal concentration of salt. The experiment will first be carried out on Drosophila, and then on the aquatic insect we collect. The genetic and toxicological analysis of the aquatic insect will contribute to our overall understanding of an understudied species. Information on genes that are regulated based on salt exposure can be sequenced and uploaded to a gene database called GenBank. I plan to acquire the skills required for this project by working with my mentor Dr. Jan Trybula. I plan to present my work at the Learning and Research Fair (which can happen multiple times as the project progresses over the two years), as well as the SUNY Undergraduate Research Conference. I also plan to publish my results in the form of an academic paper in a journal focused on either toxicology or the environment of the northeast.