A long overdue post on the first summer of research in the Caesar lab!
This summer, Shyleigh, Lexie, Lyn, and Ashley joined the Caesar lab for the longstanding Research Experiences for Undergraduates program at JMU, and we had such a good time! We studied the chemistry of plants from the arboretum, soil fungi collected from campus, and explored the haunted "Dante's Inferno" in Grand Caverns, the country's oldest show cave. We collected samples from the field, read lots of research papers, played team building games, extracted metabolites from dozens of samples, and collected hundreds of mass spectra. Most importantly, we got to know each other better and bonded as the "Caesar lab."
In the early weeks, we partnered with the JMU Arboretum to collect medicinal plant samples that have been used by indigenous peoples in the United States. We used the Native American Ethnobotany database to identify species that have been used in indigenous cultures and collected them to study in the lab. We tested their activities in an antioxidant assay, and focused on the most potent species (that also had little known about their chemistry) for chemical analysis.
Arboretum samples collected for the lab. We collected more than twenty samples, mostly leaves, from traditional ethnobotanical medicines, for extraction, bioactivity testing, and chemical analysis
Dedication pays off! Our final stop in the arboretum was the Scarlet Oak, which we were determined to collect! Eventually, we found success when Shyleigh and Ashley boosted Lyn to a clump of leaves. Funnily enough, those leaves turned out to have the most potent antioxidant activity of all of our plant samples, and was the topic of Shyleigh's final research poster.
Antioxidant testing. Pictured above is an antioxidant assay using plant extracts from the collected arboretum samples. Antioxidant-containing samples are able to clear the blue "ABTS" compound, indicating they have potentially useful medicinal compounds. Several plants, including the scarlet oak, had strong antioxidant properties.
In addition to collecting plants, we also grew LOTS of fungi, which we collected in Spring 2023. We grew more than 30 fungal strains collected from soil on JMU's campus on rice, which they love to eat, extracted them, and also tested them in our antioxidant assay.
Rice cultures of fungi. Pictured above is one set of fungi growing on rice. Most of the cultures haven't started to show their color, but a few turned the rice reddish pink in only one day! Now to figure out the chemistry behind the color...
Safety is Key. Lyn, Ashley, and Shyleigh are "geared up" in autoclavable lab coats, safety goggles, and KN95 masks to culture the fungi. Fungi make spores, so we use an abundance of caution to avoid inhaling anything potentially harmful. Luckily, the organisms we study in the lab do not cause disease, but we'd rather be overly cautious.
Fungal culture under a black light. Some fungal compounds are fluorescent, meaning they glow under UV light! This fungal culture makes several fluorescent compounds, including something orange!
During our antioxidant testing of the fungal compounds, we discovered something unusual, instead of the fungal extracts turning the blue solution clear, one of our extracts turned the blue solution purple (sorry, I don't have a picture...)! Lyn dove a little deeper into this project, hoping to identify the chemical compounds responsible for this purple color change, and presented her findings at the final research symposium. If we can figure out what type of compounds cause this color change, we may be able to use this antioxidant assay to test for other biological activities/compound classes as well.
Finally, we got to go caving in the country's oldest show cave, Grand Caverns , with whom we are working to conduct research on microbial ecology and natural products chemistry. We are also hoping to develop tours for the community focused on the microbial ecology of caves! This summer, we started this adventure by attending a specialty tour offered through the JMU Geology department (led by Dr. Ángel Garcia) about the unique geology of Grand Caverns. This tour is offered monthly (check it out here!), and we hope to build something similar for microbial ecology in a few years!
Cave shields! Lexie, Ashley, Dr. Caesar, and Shyleigh posing near an unusual cave formation, the "cave shield" in Grand Caverns. While most caves don't have any of these unique formations, Grand Caverns has over 500 cave shields. The science behind their formation is still poorly understood, and Grand Caverns is the perfect place to study this unusual phenomenon.
Our first exploratory trip in Grand Caverns. A couple of weeks later, we ventured back to Grand Caverns to observe cave microbes in their natural habitat. First stop, Dante's Inferno, a cave that has been claimed to be haunted for more than 200 years. With the help of Dr. Garcia, my students and I explored the cave and made a plan to build our cave microbial collection. Pictured here are Lyn, Lexie, Ashley, and Shyleigh outside of Grand Caverns, hard hats and head lamps ready to go, about to enter the cave for our first trip!
The cave was beautiful, just a little bit spooky, and full of interesting discoveries! We found a phosphorescent cave wall, and observed many colorful microbes growing in different sections in the cave. It was hard to get good photographs inside, but we were able to snap a great photograph of Lexie collecting some water from a pool of water which we took back to the lab.
Cave water sampling. Lexie collects (haunted?) cave water from Dante's Inferno using a sterile pipette.
Ashley, Dr. Caesar, and Lexie at the ASP conference in Bethesda, Maryland.
The summer wouldn't be complete without sharing our research findings with the scientific community, which we got to do in a number of ways. First, Lexie, Ashley and I traveled to Bethesda, Maryland to attend the American Society of Pharmacognosy conference. Thanks to my Audrey Bingel grant, Lexie and Ashley were able to attend their first scientific conference and meet fellow natural product scientists! We had a blast, ate delicious food, heard some amazing scientific talks, and presented two posters in the poster session.
When we returned from Bethesda, it was time for the final summer research symposium for the REU program, where all of the research students who participated in summer research share their research findings with the department (as well as departments of Geology and Biology). Lexie, Ashley, Lyn, and Shyleigh all killed their presentations, and we finally have posters hanging in the hall representing the Caesar lab research.
Caesar lab at the REU summer symposium. Lexie, Dr. Caesar, Lyn, Shyleigh, and Ashley breathing a sigh of relief after the poster session.
Overall, I had the best time this summer. The science was cool, but the students are even better. This is the part of my job that is just the best--getting to work with and get to know such awesome students and watch them grow into independent scientists. I am so proud to be part of their scientific family and can't wait to see what the future holds!
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