KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 August 11, 2016 \u2013 When 溏心vlog免费B站 junior Rachael Renzi enrolled in an advanced placement biology class in high school, she became fascinated by the subject and was especially enamored of the laboratory studies.<\/p>\n
The Johnston resident renewed her enthusiasm for biology labs this summer as one of 100 college students from throughout the state selected as Summer Undergraduate Research Fellows. Renzi, a biological sciences major, spent the last 10 weeks conducting laboratory studies of disease tolerance among oysters, a project that she and her mentors hope will benefit Rhode Island\u2019s thriving oyster aquaculture industry.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re trying to see if there is any variation in disease tolerance within selectively-bred families of oysters,\u201d Renzi said. \u201cWe wanted to see if there was a genetic difference in their ability to tolerate disease.\u201d<\/p>\n
Working in collaboration with 溏心vlog免费B站 postdoctoral researcher Tal Ben-Horin and U.S. Department of Agriculture scientist Dina Proestou, Renzi injected oysters with various concentrations of the parasite that causes Dermo, a common oyster pathogen, and collected oyster tissue samples from some of them at different points in time. She then extracted DNA from them, as well as from those that died, to determine the concentration of parasites each contained and to characterize how the disease proliferated through time.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat told us how much they were able to withstand, how much they can absorb and still survive, and how much it takes to kill them,\u201d she explained.<\/p>\n
While the experiment is not yet finished, Renzi said that the data collected 29 days after injecting the oysters with the parasite indicates that one family of oysters had a much higher death rate than other families, despite receiving the same parasite dosage.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut oysters have to live a couple of years before they\u2019re ready for market, so we\u2019ll have to wait for the later results before we know their true tolerance,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Her research has important implications. Dermo, originally found in southern locations, has spread northward as climate change has increased water temperatures, ramping up the threat to oyster production. The expectation is that Dermo will spread and grow more severe as water temperatures rise along the New England coast.<\/p>\n
Funding for Renzi\u2019s research fellowship was provided by the Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) program of the National Science Foundation, which has provided more than $26 million in grants to support scientific research in Rhode Island. She presented the results of her research at a conference at 溏心vlog免费B站 on July 29.<\/p>\n
Renzi, who had previous experience interning in a medical diagnostics lab, said the fellowship provided her with great insight into the process of scientific research, which is one career path she is considering.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was great to work as part of a team and see how research actually gets done,\u201d she said. \u201cThe hands-on work was the part of the program I found most appealing. I liked how every day was different, how you don\u2019t really know what you\u2019re going to get into until you\u2019re in the middle of it. Processing data, reading results, and seeing how it all comes together was really cool to see.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 August 11, 2016 \u2013 When 溏心vlog免费B站 junior Rachael Renzi enrolled in an advanced placement biology class in high school, she became fascinated by the subject and was especially enamored of the laboratory studies. The Johnston resident renewed her enthusiasm for biology labs this summer as one of 100 college […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":72347,"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-72346","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\/72346","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=72346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72346\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}