{"id":57436,"date":"2015-08-12T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-08-12T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/kansas-native-trades-biomedical-research-career-for-sharks-fish-krill-at-uri\/"},"modified":"2015-08-12T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2015-08-12T00:00:00","slug":"kansas-native-trades-biomedical-research-career-for-sharks-fish-krill-at-uri","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2015\/08\/kansas-native-trades-biomedical-research-career-for-sharks-fish-krill-at-uri\/","title":{"rendered":"Kansas native trades biomedical research career for sharks, fish, krill at 溏心vlog免费B站"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\tKINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 August 12, 2015 \u2013 Abigail Bockus took a rather atypical route to becoming a marine biologist. A native of Manhattan, Kansas, she studied neurobiology at the University of Kansas and worked in biomedical research after graduation, examining why the combination of alcohol and aspirin leads to liver damage.<\/p>\n


\n\tBut in the back of her mind she was being drawn to marine science, a discipline she hadn\u2019t studied but had learned about on family trips to visit relatives in California. So she took the plunge and enrolled to earn a doctorate in marine biology at the 溏心vlog免费B站, and now she is up to her elbows in sharks and krill and fish and more. And she\u2019s loving it.<\/p>\n


\n\tIn the last four years, Bockus has spent five months in Antarctica studying how krill will fare as the Southern Ocean warms, another two months on research ships in the Sea of Cortez, Hawaii and elsewhere, and many more months in a laboratory at 溏心vlog免费B站 examining how a tiny molecule helps marine life handle the stresses of warming waters, extreme pressure and other factors.<\/p>\n


\n\tIt is the molecular work that links her early interest in neurobiology and her present studies of marine life.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cI always knew my biomedical career was temporary,\u201d said Bockus. \u201cI was mostly there to get some lab experience. I really wanted to bring my strengths in molecular biology and apply that to something I was really interested in \u2013 marine science.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tShe chose 溏心vlog免费B站 for her doctorate based entirely on the research of Professor Brad Seibel, who studies how marine life adapts to extreme environments, from the deep-sea to the polar regions.<\/p>\n


\n\tDescribing herself as an eco-physiologist for her studies of how marine organisms are adapted to their habitat, Bockus focuses on a tiny molecule called trimethylamine oxide or TMAO, which is found inside the cells of most living things and serves to protect proteins from stress.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cTMAO helps cells work the way they\u2019re supposed to work, and it\u2019s good at combating stress,\u201d she explained. \u201cIf an animal is under stress, TMAO can help prevent damage to the cell.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tFor her dissertation, she is studying how TMAO works to help marine life survive in various stressful circumstances. For instance, she examined how deep-sea fish in the waters around Hawaii accumulate TMAO to fight the effects of extreme pressure. She found that fish species that live in deep water, like anglerfish, accumulate much more TMAO than those living in shallow water.<\/p>\n


\n\tShe is also studying how sharks that migrate from Maine to North Carolina accumulate TMAO \u2013 do they produce it in their tissues or does it come from their diet? \u2013 and whether it is used to combat temperature stress.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cIf they have a lot of ways they can handle temperature stress, then maybe the warming waters won\u2019t be a problem for them,\u201d Bockus said. \u201cBut if they are susceptible to temperature stress, then their behavior may change quite a bit and they may have to alter their migrations.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tTo study how krill use TMAO to combat temperature stress in the Southern Ocean, she traveled twice to Antarctica to conduct studies of how warming waters and increasing acidification affect krill growth and physiology. Bockus received funding from the Rhode Island Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research for her Antarctic research.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cWe were at Palmer Research Station located right on the water, with a glacier behind us where we could snowshoe or ski, with whales coming up in the bay around the station, and lots of local islands with penguin colonies,\u201d she said. \u201cThe wildlife was incredible!\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tWith less than a year left before she completes her doctorate, Bockus is beginning to look toward her next chapter. And she is considering another slight shift in direction.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cI would really like to direct my knowledge toward applied aquaculture, something that has direct applications to leading issues of the day \u2013 sustainability and global development,\u201d she said. \u201cAquaculture is a little out of my current realm, but I\u2019m drawn to the research because it has a great deal of potential for creating change.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nPictured above: 溏心vlog免费B站 doctoral student Abigail Bockus poses in Antarctica during her trip to study krill.

\n(Photo submitted by Abigail Bockus.)\n\t<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 August 12, 2015 \u2013 Abigail Bockus took a rather atypical route to becoming a marine biologist. A native of Manhattan, Kansas, she studied neurobiology at the University of Kansas and worked in biomedical research after graduation, examining why the combination of alcohol and aspirin leads to liver damage. But in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":57438,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57436\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}