‘Ford Scientists in Southern California

So it would be a travesty if I created a blog and didn’t post some sublime pictures of Catalina Island in all its splendor.

Catalina Island is the most popular destination of the channel islands. In the 50s, it became a hotbed of activity as a relatively close place to Hollywood to film Westerns. Apparently, John Wayne was a regular visitor to the gorgeous island. As a result, there’s a great deal of ecological issues of invasive species versus the endangered endemics that already lived there. During our visits there, I was inundated with information on the plight of the Catalina Island Desert Fox and many other species of plants and animals that are facing extinction at the hands of well-adapted invasive species. The silver lining of this invasive species problems is that the bison that they’ve brought to the island have now been used as the foundational species to repopulate other places like the Dakotas and Montana where the bison population has been suffering. Also, the kelp forests in the shallow bays of Catalina Island have drawn the attention of the government and been designated as Marine Protected Areas (MPA). One of the nights, we were able to do a snorkel dive of the area and see huge lobsters and other fish that would be overfished or their habitats destroyed in a non-MPA area.

Scientifically, Catalina is really important because the Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies at USC has set up its main field station at Catalina Island. Upon a first glance, I thought we had landed at a resort, not a scientific lab. A few major benefactors turned this modest marine lab into a first-rate residence for scientists, both temporary and long-term. Adjacent to the lab is one of the dozen or so hyperbaric chambers in North America on the island. This is used to treat the bends and other diving sicknesses. We were fortunate to receive a tour of the chamber and learn about the physics of how they treat people in the chamber, as well as things you don’t think about like how to bring in food, and another doctor, all the while keeping the pressure and temperature to particular conditions to help the patient.

So you may have heard on the news of the earthquake that occured in the L.A. area yesterday. According to seismologists, it was a 5.4 on the logarithmic Richter scale (the Szechuan Earthquake was 7.9/8.0).

Unusually, I was in another lab, specifically Dr. Jed Fuhrman’s at the time. Our lab is limited by the number of advanced computational tools we have for microbial analysis, while Dr. Fuhrman’s lab specializes in that sort of analysis and has a plethora of very expensive and useful toys. I had been working at a computer doing an analysis of an ARISA gel, when the walls and roofs started shaking pretty violently. To be honest, I thought it was additional construction at first–a mainstay at institutions of higher learning during the summer months. Quickly I realized this was no joke and ran into the other offices to go under a doorway in case there was falling debris, etc. Luckily, as Gov. Schwarzenegger so aptly pointed out since the damaging 1994 earthquake, building codes have been improved immensely. As a result, there seems (hoped…) there’s no structural damage to the USC buildings as a result of the quake. Oddly enough, I had been anticipating to leave Dr. Fuhrman’s lab within a few minutes after the quake hit anyway to meet my fellow REU participants for an outing at the La Brea Tarpits and Page Museum.

I suppose the scariest thought of the whole quake is the relaxed attitude on the part of residents here, as well as the possibility that the earthquake was only a foreshock to a much more severe quake. Few people evacuated their tall buildings after the event (unlike me…). In accordance with what seems like the culture of Los Angeles, few people were panicking over the earthquake, but more awed by the powers of nature. Moreover, it seems like most people had little if any idea of what to do if the event was more severe. I’ll just hope that a bigger earthquake does not come through during my last few weeks here.

Growing up in the hurricane-prone area of south Louisiana, I know the damage nature can wield first-hand. For decades, many policy-makers and residents maintained a similar “laissez-faire” attitude of protecting New Orleans from flooding. It seems L.A. was better prepared for its medley of natural disasters than LA was.

Hello!

So, Sebastianna (from the Communications Office) was kind enough to set up this blog for Adam and I to document our experience doing science research at a larger institution than Haverford for the summer.

Although Haverford and Bryn Mawr’s science departments can offer some opportunities for students to pursue research in the summertime, the range of topics for research that any department can offer is limited by the resources and size of a liberal arts college. I was most interested in exploring research opportunities that combine my interests in biology and geology, however the “Geobiology” program at USC caught my eye.  Broadly, the program looks at the interaction of life and earth sciences.  Practically, research topics encompass sub-disciplines such as oceanography, ecology, genetics, biochemistry, and geochemistry.

In the laboratory of Katrina Edwards, whom I am working with for the summer, I’m studying the microbial diversity of sulfide plume particles from hydrothermal vents in the Pacific Ocean.  With the advent of ALVIN and JASON submersibles, deep-ocean exploration uncovered teeming life at hydrothermal vents in the deep-ocean that was previously believed to be a desert.  As research progressed, hydrothermal vent ecosystems gained popularity when many believed they could be used as proxies for ecosystems on other planets (i.e. Mars).  So, a fair amount is known of the microorganisms that inhabit the vent itself, as well as the organisms expected in the basalt of the sea-floor on the side of the vents, however, knowledge of the microbes that inhabit the plume of sulfide particles that are shot up through the vent is limited. 

With the help of Brandy Toner (now at U.Minn-Twin Cities, previously a post-doc in our lab), who performed the sub-sampling of the field samples from sediment traps on the edge of hydrothermal vents, I’ve extracted DNA from about 30 separate samples, with promising results so far.  Using microbiological and molecular biology techniques, such as culturing and Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR), I’m able to see that there’s bacteria of interest in these samples.  Using computational and sequencing methods, I’ll be able to find out how the samples vary with relation to each other, as well as to other ocean environments.  As of today, it’s looking like I’ll have about 20 good sub-sampled DNA extracts to perform computational work on.  These should yield interesting results in the weeks to come!

Ben Pyenson ‘09, a Biology major and Geology minor, and Adam Subhas ‘09, a chemistry/biochemistry student are participating in separate REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates) programs at USC in L.A. for the summer.

Ben’s work focuses on a growing field termed broadly as “Geobiology”, which is concerned with the interface of Earth and Life sciences in very broad senses, while Adam is working on a “Snapshots in Chemistry” program.

They’ll be writing about their experiences working at a large research university hoping to enlighten others in the Haverford community to other fields of research and study in natural sciences outside of the focus that Haverford offers.