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The Sci-Files is hosted by Mari Dowling and Dimitri Joseph. Together they highlight the importance of science, especially student research at Michigan State University.
Welcome to the Sci Files, an Impact 89 FM series that explores student research here at Michigan State University. We're your co hosts, Marty Dowling.
Dimitri Joseph:And Dimitri Joseph. Next up, we have, Chris Lim. Chris, if you don't mind, could you introduce yourself? Give us a little bit about your background and then how you made your way to Michigan State University.
Chris Lin:Hi, everyone. My name is Chris. I'm from New York City, and my background is biochemistry. My internship on MSU is on radiology. I'm at precision health department, and my mentor is doctor Peter Wang, and we're studying the effects of nanoparticles as a tracker for stem cell therapy in primary fibrosis.
Dimitri Joseph:Okay. Great. That sounds like some very breaking technology. I I heard nanoparticles, pulmonary fibrosis, and radiology. They all sound like very complex and detailed topics.
Dimitri Joseph:Could you give us an idea about how and what pulmonary fibrosis is?
Chris Lin:Pulmonary fibrosis is a lung disease that results from a chronic repetitive injury, and this hinders the oxygen transport between the airway into the bloodstream. This lung disease causing irregular thickening and hardening of the airway. So it's kinda hard to breathe, and there's respiratory hypertension.
Dimitri Joseph:That sounds like a very scary disease. You also mentioned nanoparticles. Where do the nanoparticles come into play in studying pulmonary fibrosis?
Chris Lin:So the current treatment of perine fibrosis requires medications. However, since perine fibrosis is irreversible, medications can only slow down the process and there's also lung transplant, but there's complications like organ rejection and you're also medicated for life to reduce inflammatory risk from your immune system. So what we want to use is stem cell treatment. Stem cells can repair or replace damaged tissues and that's why it's a very innovative way for treatments, but still preclinical trials. And the issue of transplanting stem cells into the lung is sometimes stem cells would go into the esophagus, into the stomach, into the intestines or it can go to the lung, so we don't know where it's going and we want a tracking method to find where the stem cell treatment.
Chris Lin:So nanoparticles, it's like a tracer. We can trace these nanoparticles to find where the stem cells are going.
Mari Dowling:Why is it a problem that these stem cells don't just go to the lung and they have the ability to go to, like, the stomach, for example?
Chris Lin:So the stem cells we're using is human plumbrig progenitor cells, and that is specifically for the lung cells. If it's going to the stomach or the intestines, then it probably won't differentiate to those specific organ type.
Dimitri Joseph:What's the current standards of tracking stem cells right now, and what what are you focused on? So we use
Chris Lin:a tracking method using MPI, magnetic particle imaging, and nanoparticles, which are really small particles that could be metal, iron, platinum, copper, and they have different sizes and shapes. And ideally, the size of these nanoparticles will be around 1 to 500 nanometers. And what we're concentrating on, it's to optimize our signal intensity that is produced from these nanoparticles. So we would utilize the shapes, the size, the different metal we're using to really induce a higher intensity of the signal that's produced.
Dimitri Joseph:Have you found any specific nanoparticles that are perfect?
Chris Lin:So we tested a rod shaped nanoparticle, and we lab synthesized this rod shape. And we found that this rod shape induce a more cell internalization compared to a sphere shaped nanoparticle, and we're trying to find the optimal concentration to incubate these nanoparticles within these cells so we can further use this to track and monitor the post stem cell treatments.
Dimitri Joseph:Beautiful. That sounds like amazing work that you're doing. I'm glad that you found your way to MSU to help with this effort. Thank you. Thank
Mari Dowling:you, Chris, for that explanation. Now I learned more about how nanoparticles can help in treatment of pulmonary fibrosis, which is very cool.
Dimitri Joseph:So next up, I believe we have Kevin Villatoro. Did I did I pronounce that right?
Kevin Villatoro:Yeah. Perfect, Dimitri. It's, Kevin Villatoro from the University of Central Florida in Orlando, Florida. I'm a long way from home, but I'm happy to be here at Michigan State University. I worked under, doctor Evangeline Alacilha in the nano biosensors lab in the Department of Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering.
Dimitri Joseph:Cool. So what do you study at your home institution?
Kevin Villatoro:I study molecular microbiology.
Dimitri Joseph:Okay. So you you're into the details. I I'm hearing molecular biology. You work in a nano biosensors lab. You're focused on very microscopic or nanoscopic things.
Dimitri Joseph:What have you been doing these past 11 weeks at Michigan State University's Schrock program?
Kevin Villatoro:Yeah. As part of the Schrock program, I've been working with doctor Vangi, and we've looked into the absorption kinetics of different salmonella serotypes on glycan coated magnetic nanoparticles. Oh, a mouthful.
Mari Dowling:Tell us what that means in in normal person terms first.
Kevin Villatoro:Well, to begin, nanoparticle or specifically the glycan coated magnetic nanoparticle is an iron based substance, the one typically used in the lab. It has a simple sugar carbohydrate coating, this one being chitosan, a shellfish sugar produced that, it has the ability to bind to the salmonella cells.
Dimitri Joseph:Why are you interested in salmonella?
Kevin Villatoro:I've looked into salmonella specifically because the United States Center For Disease Control and Prevention estimates that salmonella and the foodborne infection, salmonellosis, leads to thousands of hospitalizations a year.
Dimitri Joseph:Yeah. I think I know someone that was infected with salmonella in a when I understand it, it wasn't pretty.
Kevin Villatoro:Yeah. For sure. There's symptoms of cramps, fever, and diarrhea.
Dimitri Joseph:How would these nanoparticles could relate it to salmonella?
Kevin Villatoro:The current detection methods for a salmonella includes PCR, polymerase chain reaction, and that allows for DNA amplification along with culture based methods, which is the growth of bacteria. An alternative would be the use of these magnetic nanoparticles to allow for a faster, more cost efficient method of detection and being able to separate and allow for a measurable threshold of salmonella in food matrix or any produce.
Dimitri Joseph:That's clear and that's very important. So you have these food distribution companies and they need a method to detect salmonella because that that is a a threatening pathogen.
Kevin Villatoro:Yes. For sure. And my research focused on the sample preparation aspect, being able to see the effectiveness of using these MMPs or magnetic nanoparticles on salmonella. And I looked into 4 serotypes of salmonella specifically. And these serotypes are classified based on the different surface protein expressions on either the o antigen on the outer membrane of the cell or the h antigen on the flagella.
Kevin Villatoro:And the 4 investigated were Salmonella Hadar, Agona, Saint Paul, and Enteritatis.
Mari Dowling:You said that it's faster and more cost efficient, but I would think it'd be more expensive to use the nanoparticles than the traditional method. How is your technique better?
Kevin Villatoro:Previous literature suggests that the use of these M and Ps or magnetic nanoparticles costs cents on a dollar and it takes 15 minutes of interaction with a solid matrix. Let's say, a piece of romaine lettuce in a buffer solution, such as PBS, allowed to give the opportunity for the salmonella on the solid food to go into the solution and be detected with the food to go into the solution and be detected with the addition of nanoparticles.
Mari Dowling:And how long does that process take compared to PCR?
Kevin Villatoro:A PCR can take, countless hours and the use of these MMPs can take 15 minutes for an enough sample preparation to bind to enough salmonella cells.
Mari Dowling:That is a pretty big difference then in terms of efficiency.
Kevin Villatoro:Yes.
Mari Dowling:Is the target salmonella foodborne salmonella then in terms of diagnosing it on you mentioned lettuce, for example, but on food products prior to the consumer level?
Kevin Villatoro:Yes. I think it's pivotal to detect traces of salmonella or other foodborne pathogens prior to consumption, especially in the food and meat packaging industry so that people are made aware and there are a decrease in the number of foodborne pathogen infections and hospitalizations as well as a decreased number in the quantity of food recalls.
Mari Dowling:Do they currently test those products regularly, or is it just kinda as things happen, they go back and like, oh, crap. There's an outbreak?
Kevin Villatoro:I believe, in the meat packaging industry and in that food processing, there are multiple tests run prior to the release. But because it takes so long and it's expensive, there is a little bit of a time delay in delivery of the information.
Dimitri Joseph:What exactly did your research entail? What were you focused on optimizing?
Kevin Villatoro:So I was looking at the kinetics or just how fast these m and Ps are able to bind to the salmonella, and I looked at the isotherm. So at equilibrium, seeing what's the highest adsorption capacity, looking at the number of bound cell colonies over the mass of the MNPs. And I find that all 4 serotypes in the kinetics experiment reacted similarly and adhered to the pseudo second order model, which has the assumption that chemisorption is the rate limiting step as we see that there are electrostatic interactions between the M and Ps and the salmonella cells.
Dimitri Joseph:What was the main finding from your research?
Kevin Villatoro:Yeah. The main finding of my research is that all 4 serotypes reacted similarly to the m and p's and that there are very minimal differences amongst them. And even though they are categorized based on their differences in protein expression on the surface, they react very similarly to the models tested.
Dimitri Joseph:So so it sounds like the magnetic nanoparticles are a good way to test for salmonella across different serotypes. And from what we discussed earlier, it's an improvement upon the current standards. So, yeah, I'm glad that you you did this research this summer because maybe we'll be reducing the incidence of salmonella infections.
Kevin Villatoro:Yes. I can conclusively say that M and Ps are able to bind to salmonella cells.
Dimitri Joseph:So last up, we have Darnella Samuel. Darnella, could you please introduce yourself? Tell us where you're from and what institutions you're affiliated with.
Darnilla Samuel:Hi. My name is Darnella Samuel. I'm from Saint Lucia. I attend the University of the Virgin Islands, and I'm here at Michigan State to do research on understanding the role of lipases and lysolipids in coral thermal tolerance.
Dimitri Joseph:Just from with that introduction, it sounds like you're a person that's connected to the Caribbean Island. You're attending the University of the Virgin Islands, and you're also a native of Saint Lucia. And now you're studying corals, which is also a a Caribbean species. Could you give us an introduction about corals?
Darnilla Samuel:So corals are colonial organisms, meaning that they're made up of thousands of colonies of this animal called polyps. And in this polyps are algae that we call dinoflagellates.
Dimitri Joseph:What's the major concern? What what were you focused on in your 11 weeks here at Michigan State?
Darnilla Samuel:So we were focused on, finding out why the corals, globally are being affected by climate change, specifically by coral bleaching. And we're noticing that this is happening more frequently and more intensively as there are large populations of corals around the world that are being heavily bleached and are also dying by this coral bleaching epidemic.
Mari Dowling:What do you mean by coral bleaching? And is that do you mean that literally? Like, someone's pouring bleach on them? What's the coral bleaching?
Darnilla Samuel:Right. So coral bleaching is basically when well, their main cause is by heat stress, by climate change. And then we're noticing that because of climate change, the oceans are heating up. And this increased heat is causing stress to the polyps, the animals, and the corals. And then they tend to expel their dinoflagellates, the algae.
Darnilla Samuel:And when they do that, they lose their main food source because the the algae provides it with this food, and it also provides it with its color. It is it's its coral field. So when they're expelled, they lose their color and they turn white, which is called coral bleaching.
Dimitri Joseph:What's the impact of coral bleaching?
Darnilla Samuel:Over 500,000,000 people around the world depend on corals in ways such as a way to get income for food. Countries depend on it for tourism, and organisms in the ocean also depend on corals as a place to nurse their youngs, as a natural ocean filter, and also a place to live. So it's a ecosystem. So these ecosystems decreasing in large numbers in a short period of time is heavily impacting everyone.
Dimitri Joseph:Yeah. This sounds like a very important process that we need to conserve. We need to conserve the corals from from what I'm hearing.
Mari Dowling:Kinda sounds like if the trees all started turning white and dying all of you know, we'd start panicking probably a lot faster than if corals which are underwater, and maybe we can't see them as much. Yeah.
Dimitri Joseph:Okay. So great. So now now that we understand the problem, what exactly have you been doing to to research this process?
Darnilla Samuel:So we've been looking at previous literature, and we noticed that depending on the type of dinoflagellate that the corals have influences how resistant they are to this coral bleaching epidemic. So we're noticing that corals with this dinoflagellate called cladocopium are more susceptible to the bleaching, and they have more of these lipids with 2 fatty acid chains. Whereas corals that are less susceptible to this bleaching has more of this dinoflagellate called durosidianium, and durosidianium has more lipids with one fatty acid chain.
Mari Dowling:What is the effect of, you
Darnilla Samuel:know, the 1 versus 2 phospholipid in these dinoflagellate? Well, we're predicting that depending on the type of lipid that the dinoflagellate has affects its tolerance to heat and the stress and coral bleaching.
Mari Dowling:So is it like having 2 is makes it more resistant than Well,
Darnilla Samuel:it's actually having 1 makes it more resistant.
Mari Dowling:Very interesting. Thank you. I I knew that the corals are dying, but I didn't really know so much about the specifics of it. So that was really interesting to learn about how there's actually bacteria in them too, and that that's what's causing these problems is bacteria being expelled. Just to leave us with, do you have any, you know, final messages or key takeaways from your research you'd like to share with us?
Darnilla Samuel:So my lab, we realized a significance in the results that we found. So we noticed that the bleaching resistant corals have a natural abundance of those one fatty acid chain lipids. However, the bleaching susceptible corals make more of those one fatty acid chain lipids over time. So what that means is this one fatty acid chain lipids are an important mechanism for fighting off coral bleaching. So we believe in this correlation might be a strong point to showing their resilience for climate change and coral bleaching.
Dimitri Joseph:Thank you, Darnella. This this isn't a very invisible but an important project that you're working on where you're trying to help us understand the mechanisms that could be threatening our ecosystems. Ashley, I'd like to just thank all of you members of the summer research opportunities program.
Mari Dowling:Thank you for joining us here at Michigan State.