URI
student studying disease tolerance among oysters
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| URI student Rachael Renzi poses in a laboratory while conducting studies of disease tolerance in oysters. (Photo by Nora Lewis.) |
When
University of Rhode Island 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 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’s thriving oyster
aquaculture industry.
Working
in collaboration with URI 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.
“That
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,” she explained.
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.
“But
oysters have to live a couple of years before they’re ready for market, so
we’ll have to wait for the later results before we know their true tolerance,”
she said.
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.
Funding
for Renzi’s 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 URI on July 29.
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.
“It
was great to work as part of a team and see how research actually gets done,”
she said. “The hands-on work was the part of the program I found most
appealing. I liked how every day was different, how you don’t really know what
you’re going to get into until you’re in the middle of it. Processing data,
reading results, and seeing how it all comes together was really cool to see.”
