So this story comes to an end… Or has it? One and a half years ago, 100 students ventured into the world of scientific research sponsored by BioMINDS. Some students had already developed a degree of lab skills, while others were just beginning to acquire them. I belonged to the latter of these two groups. 

Yet after all this time, I have seen how we have surpassed many obstacles, endured numerous hardships, and most of all: acquired valuable knowledge that classes alone cannot provide. We have learned to make better use of our time, we have seen how significant some seemingly irrelevant findings can be, and we have begun to develop a set of analytical skills to interpret real-life data that may someday lead to scientific breakthroughs!

In order to asses our analytical skills and our experience in the BioMINDS program, we attended at the BioMINDS Annual Poster Day, just about a month ago. During this day, we heard and participated in a series of conferences given by leaders in the pharmaceutical-biotechnological  industry, such as Mr. Emilio Rivera, Vice President of Operations at Amgen and Mr. Pablo Vila, Training Manager at Abbott ABL. Also, we shared our experience in this program and got hear what some mentors thought about the program in general and how this initiative has lead to positive outcomes at all the different campuses from the University of Puerto Rico. 

Near the end of the program, all of us, students from BioMINDS, got to present our posters, as well as evaluate three other randomly selected ones. The students I got to evaluate were: Josué Millán, from the laboratory that I worked at last year, Rey Yamil Pagán, also from my college, and Charles Fermaintt from UPR at Humacao. All three made excellent posters. Their presentations were clear and well informed. Here is learned:

Josué’s project focuses on the isolation and characterization of bioprospects from the Pitcher plant Nepenthes sp. Indeed, he had already isolated and characterized a variety of organisms that were capable of surviving highly acidic environments, that are natural to the gooey substance inside Pitcher plants. He also characterized the bioprospects biochemically and was waiting for the results of the sequencing laboratory.

Rey worked on the biological analysis of a biomedical material – Titanium Alloy. He investigated how different fusions of the metal along with other inorganic substances affected osteoblast adhesion to the material. He determined that two of the Ti-fusions were not biocompatible and therefore, not suited for osteoblast growth.

Charles, on the other hand, worked on a project involving gene expression. He intended to identify certain genes expressed by Saccharomyces cerevisiae via the use of repressor genes. His work plays a very significant role in processes such as embryonic development and tumor progression.

Visit the blog at:  http://magcan.wordpress.com/

At least, that’s where nanotechnology is taking us. Everything from nanowires that absorb oils (right image), to nanoscaled biosensors are examples of innovative materials this young branch in science has produced.  In the past two decades, federal funding agencies, as well as private ones have funded billions of dollars in nano-oriented research. Apart from all the beneficial physical properties nanoscaled systems offer, they have had great progress in many biomedical problems humanity faces today. Liposomes (image below) and biodegradable nanoparticles are examples of nanoscaled systems that are already approved for treating certain cancer types and even menopausal sypmptoms!

            The change nanothecnology is making around the world is analogous to the transition of research laboratory and project topics that I am going through right now. Last semester, I did not mention that the story regarding the search for novel antimicrobials in Puerto Rican soil would end, but it did. Now, I am working at the Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering Research Laboratory from UPRM’s Chemical Engineering Department, under the mentorship of Madeline Torres-Lugo, PhD and  Héctor Rodríguez, PhD candidate.  Although this sudden change from Biology to Biomedical Engineering (BME) research is radical and unexpected, I believe that it was necessary. The research project I worked on last summer gave me more than just a taste of BME research. It kindled my passion for research and replenished my strengths to pursue a graduate degree. I thank Dr. Carlos Rios-Velázquez and his extraordinary research team for enriching my knowledge in molecular biology and bacteriology and teaching me the skills and strategies to be successful in more than just the lab bench.

This semester I aim at: learning and developing protocols regarding specific in vitro experiments, improving tissue culture skills, fluorescence and light microscopy data analysis, among others. I will find myself replicating a fellow undergraduate’s experiments at random intervals in order to corroborate my skills and have duplicate sets of data.  In parallel, I will be learning about progress on hyperthermic treatment of cancer cells, given that it will be the focus of the research project I will work on. This semester’s work plan has no relationship with past ones, since they are completely different projects.  However, as the title suggests, these may seem like small steps, but they will contribute equally to the project like the pixels in a bigger, better picture.

For all the information regarding my new research project and progress from this entry henceforth, you may visit my other research blog: http://magcan.wordpress.com/ .

 

I think my previous post merits more explanation. In this research project, as you may have read from my very first post, we intend to complete two objectives: genetic screening for uncultivable antimicrobial production and whole-cell screening for cultivable antimicrobial production from soil samples. Both start by randomly taking soils samples out of areas such as a rainforest, salt lands, and parking lots (incredible!) in Puerto Rico. 

Genetic screening is rather simple in comparison to troublesome incubators and take-too-long-to-grow microbes. In this phase, soil samples are subjected to commercially available soil DNA isolation kits. This DNA extract is then put into a thermocycler  where it undergoes polymerase chain reaction using selective primers that amplify genes encoding for enzymes strongly associated to antibiotic production called PKS and NRPS. In the previous post, I explained that even tough amplification occurred, the primers for PKS were not being used at conditions that optimized their specificity. Hence, we obtained positive results, all samples had PKS amplifications, but further optimization will give us a better idea of the concentration of amplicons and variability within them. 

In another level, we want to search for novel antimicrobial activity from cultivable soil microorganisms. After obtaining soil samples, we suspend them in water, dilute them, plate them on solid media, and incubate them under different conditions. Once the microbial populations start to flourish, we isolate those microorganisms that present antimicrobial activity – ergo, inhibition zones – and test them against our target bacteria. From the results that I posted the other day you can observe that we focused this aspect of our experiment on two actinomycetes isolated by the grad student Vanessa Cardona. The first one, AR, did not present any antagonistic activity over Staphylococcus aureus or Pseudomonas aeruginosa. However, in a very intense week at the lab, every single culture plate belonging to my experiment with AR got contaminated. Guess who? Well Fungi of course! Not only does every microbiology laboratory has to fight against fungal contamination, but  when you live in a sunny, beautiful and immensely humid tropical island such as Puerto Rico, you are forced to take extreme caution with the purity and sterility of the incubators, tools, etc. Well, during Mr. Fungi’s visit to my AR cultures, we were surprised to see that AR was able to inhibit microbial growth after all, just that it was not bacteria. It was all the fungus in the plate. We decided to isolate both funguses present in the plate and run further tests on AR and the other actinomycete AV against them. We dubbed the funguses H1 and H2. As we can see from the image in the previous post, AR was able to inhibit growth in both funguses, as opposed to AV and our control of course. That means that AR produces an antifungal substance. Now we look forward in doing further experiments to characterize H1 and H2 and to see if we can isolate the antifungal. 

Now it was a whole different story with AV. On the first test of antimicrobial activity of AV against our microbial targets, we observed something that looked like an inhibition zone in the S. aureus culture. Upon repetition of this assay we confirmed that indeed there was a 0.5 – 0.7 cm inhibition zone between S. aureus and the yellow pigment secreted by the actinomycete. Nothing against P. aeruginosa though. Therefore, it is safe to say that AV is secreting an antimicrobial agent against S. aureus, yet we would like to test the antimicrobial potential of AV against other gram positive-bacteria to verify its specificity.