NEWS

Over the summer, two students participated in the NM EPSCoR Externship Program. The Externship Program is a research exchange program that allows New Mexico graduate students (with an existing assistantship) to spend a semester or summer doing research at a partnering New Mexico university or research facility. This report is from UNM PhD student John Roesgen about his summer at NMSU.

My PhD has centered around the physiology of microalgae and the changes in metabolic output associated with encapsulation within a silica sol-gel matrix. Silica sol-gel encapsulation is a way of holding cells in suspension within a transparent, inert matrix of silica. This matrix physically constrains the cells from moving and dividing. It has been asserted and supported that some cyanobacteria increase the amounts of certain metabolic products when encapsulated in silica sol-gels. I am interested in tracking this increased metabolism in the model microalga C. reinhardtii. While I have the instrumentation and instructional resources required for physiological measurements at UNM, I wanted to supplement these with measurements of the actual metabolites produced by encapsulated C. reinhardtii. To do this type of analysis, I would need to learn the procedures from Dr. Omar Holguin at NMSU and use the gas chromatograph in his lab. One of my PhD committee members suggested that I apply for the NM EPSCoR externship which would allow me to do this over the summer. I had met Dr. Holguin at an algal biofuels cohort meeting at NMSU and the EPSCoR All Hands meeting this past April.

Dr. Holguin welcomed me to his lab to learn the procedure and practice running some of my samples over the summer. I moved into NMSU campus housing and began working in the lab in June. Dr. Holguin gave me a paper with the general procedure for metabolomics analysis in C. reinhardtii that would be my guide. I was provided with freeze dried samples of N. salina and Galdieria, on which I could practice. After running the analysis I returned to UNM to encapsulate some samples of C. reinhardtii and preserve them for transport back to NMSU. I have at this point completed one round of metabolomics assay on both a liquid suspension culture of C. reinhardtii and a gel encapsulated culture. I am in the process of comparing the metabolites found in the samples of these two treatments.

I believe that this analytical tool will help further my understanding of the effect that encapsulation is truly having on algal cell metabolism that will complement the physiological measurements I am performing at UNM. I doubt that I would have been able to expand my knowledge to include metabolomic assays or incorporated them into my research without the assistance provided through this externship. I would like to thank everyone at UNM, NMSU and NM EPSCoR for giving me this opportunity. I would like to especially thank Dr. Omar Holguin and Barry Dungan for inviting me into the lab at NMSU and giving me the instructions and resources that I needed.