On:
In: e. coli, Environmental Research and Innovation Center, Freshwater@UW, Greg Kleinheinz, Jena Choi, microplastics on beaches, UW-Milwaukee, UW-Oshkosh

Jena Choi, Freshwater@UW student, collects water from beaches for E. coli analysis later at the UW-Oshkosh Environmental Research and Innovation Center. Image Credit: Megan Jensik

By ­­­Jena Choi, Freshwater Collaborative summer research student

This summer, 35 undergraduate students from across the country conducted research with Freshwater@UW, the University of Wisconsin’s cross-site, cross-discipline research opportunities program. Freshwater@UW is supported by the Freshwater Collaborative, Wisconsin Sea Grant, Water@UW–Madison, the Water Resources Institute and the University of Wisconsin–Madison Graduate School. In the final weeks of the program, students reflected on what they learned. We are sharing several of their stories over the coming months. Here’s Jena Choi, an undergraduate sophomore in freshwater science from UW–Milwaukee, who worked with Greg Kleinheinz at UW–Oshkosh.

I stumbled across Freshwater@UW a year ago, and I’m pleased that my persistence landed me in this program. As someone who finds comfort in familiarity, this program was the right step to coming out my comfort zone and exploring research in a new laboratory.

I had the privilege of working at ERIC (Environmental Research and Innovation Center) in the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, where I conducted my research in evaluating methods for analyzing microplastics from beach sand samples. Microplastics is a hot topic in the environmental field, and we’ve come a long way in developing several methods for analyzing them. The problem lies more in which methods to use and how effective they are at extracting tiny microplastics that you can’t even see with the naked eye. 

Choi reads water temperature for weekly beach data reports. Image Credit: Megan Jensik

One key lesson I’ve learned about research is that it involves a lot of reevaluating, revising and importantly, retrying. Rather than picking up another person’s project, I had to start from the beginning. I navigated through the seas of different methods from other scientific journals while remodifying them several times to fit both my limited time and resources. Once I settled with a method proposed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the true battle was finding and ordering everything before I could start my project. The process required a lot of patience and persistence, especially when the methods didn’t show promising results. However, all these moments gave me great insight on what graduate level research would look like, as well as a key lesson in being independent.

A density separation setup in the lab to separate settled solids from floating solids (microplastics). Image Credit: Jena Choi

I also learned that being part of the Freshwater@UW program is more than research. It also branches into helping communities and learning different career opportunities. Not only does ERIC host research projects, but they also test samples for campus members and external clients. I was able to help people know if their drinking water is safe and alert them of any possible dangers. Another welcome surprise were my weekly beach routes where I collected beach water around Winnebago County to test for E. coli. If the beaches reached a concerning level, it was our duty to warn the public by putting up signs and informing the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources about the elevated levels of E. coli. Based on these experiences, I can see myself working in both a field and lab setting while working with the public through education and science communication. 

I’m grateful that Freshwater@UW has given me the opportunity to explore research in UW-Oshkosh. I’ve not only pursued my interest in microplastics, but I’ve learned the valuable skills of constructing my own project and independently solving any related conundrums or mistakes. With everything I’ve learned, I see my career heading to a professional track and hope to use the skills I’ve learned to improve Wisconsin’s water.

The post Summer research student learns independence and patience while studying microplastics first appeared on Wisconsin Sea Grant.

Original Article

Blog | Wisconsin Sea Grant

Blog | Wisconsin Sea Grant

https://www.seagrant.wisc.edu/blog/summer-research-student-learns-independence-and-patience-while-studying-microplastics/

Wisconsin Sea Grant

On:
In: aquaculture, columnaris, columnaris disease, David Hunnicutt, Flavobacterium columnare, Jhonatan Sepulveda Villet, Mark McBride, St. Norbert College, UW-Milwaukee, yellow perch

One of the barriers to developing an aquaculture industry around yellow perch—popular in Wisconsin for its starring role in fish fries—has to do with columnaris disease, caused by Flavobacterium columnare, a naturally occurring bacterium affecting both wild and farmed freshwater fish.

Wisconsin Sea Grant-funded researchers have spent several years gaining a deeper understanding of F. columnare and working towards a vaccine that could prevent columnaris disease in farmed fish—and not just yellow perch, but other freshwater species as well.

In Sea Grant’s 2020-22 research cycle, professors Mark McBride and Jhonatan Sepulveda Villet of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and David Hunnicutt of St. Norbert College in De Pere are joining forces to understand just how F. columnare wreaks its damage.

“This is one of the top disease-causing organisms for freshwater aquaculture anywhere in the world,” said McBride, a microbiologist in UWM’s Department of Biological Sciences.

One of his discoveries—made in tandem with a group in Japan approaching the same problem from a different angle—is that many bacteria in the Flavobacterium family have a novel way of secreting proteins out of the cell. F. columnare’s secretion system is, it seems, a key to combating the disease it causes.

In earlier work that McBride and Hunnicutt conducted together, they found out that F. columnare’s secretion system secreted at least 40 different proteins from the cell, some of which were suspected to be involved in virulence, though it was not yet possible to determine which of those 40 proteins was the culprit.

At the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, graduate students Nicole Thunes and Rachel Conrad assist with the research. (Submitted photo)

What they did find, however, was that knocking out the secretion system and creating a “mutant” without it made the bacterium unable to cause disease in fish.

Part of the current research focuses on which of those several dozen secreted proteins are the important ones in causing disease.

The secretion system also performs at least one other critical function: it helps F. columnare move, crawling over surfaces with a treadmill-like system. “These bacteria move kind of like a tank,” said McBride, “with moving treads along the surface of the cell.”

As he summarized, “The secretion machine has two jobs: it secretes proteins out through the cell surface, and it’s also the motor that moves those treads along the cell surface. Both may be needed to cause disease in the fish.”

Hunnicutt, the St. Norbert biology professor, brings expertise in fish and fish immunology and has known McBride for years, having completed a postdoctoral fellowship in McBride’s lab. Experiments for the current Sea Grant project will take place at both UW-Milwaukee and St. Norbert College.

Sepulveda Villet, an expert on yellow perch aquaculture at UW-Milwaukee’s School of Freshwater Sciences, also plays a critical role in this work. In Milwaukee, McBride and Sepulveda Villet have the assistance of graduate and undergraduate students, and in De Pere, this work has proven to be a prime learning opportunity for Hunnicutt’s many undergraduates.

Said Hunnicutt, “I have run three immunology lab courses using the vaccine trial as our central project, meaning something like 70 students have been exposed to the immunology and microbiology of aquaculture almost without knowing it.”

The research has also provided learning opportunities for Prof. David Hunnicutt’s undergraduates at St. Norbert College in De Pere. (Submitted photo)

Continued Hunnicutt, “A lot of my students are interested in [human] medicine and want to do infectious disease research, but they’re undergraduates.” Working with fish gives them a safe chance to get their feet wet because none of the disease-causing systems they encounter in Hunnicutt’s lab will cause illness in people.

Funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is also playing a role in the research because USDA—like Sea Grant—has an interest in research that aids the U.S. aquaculture industry. With that additional funding, similar experiments will be performed using rainbow trout.

USDA research scientist Brian Shepherd serves as the principal investigator for the rainbow trout work, with McBride as a cooperator, in the agency’s terminology. “The USDA and Sea Grant-funded projects are dovetailing,” said McBride. “There’s a synergism between them.”

That synergy stands to benefit the aquaculture industry broadly, recognizing that there may be differences in how bacteria interacts with one type of fish versus another, given the varying temperatures at which fish species grow and other factors.

Said McBride, “We need to have our eye on not just one fish species. If we’re going to make generalizations that are useful for freshwater aquaculture around the world, we need to have our eye on multiple fish to see where the generalities are in how this bacterium causes disease.”

Original Article

News Releases – Wisconsin Sea Grant

News Releases – Wisconsin Sea Grant

https://www.seagrant.wisc.edu/news/secretion-system-is-key-to-understanding-columnaris-disease/

Jennifer Smith