2008 Best Poster Winners Present Their Research

by Mika Pringle Tolson

Rebecca Werlin of UC Santa Barbara

The best poster winners from the 2008 TSR&TP Research Symposium returned to give brief oral presentations of their research to this year's audience.

Rebecca Werlin, a graduate student in Molecular, Cellular & Developmental Biology at UC Santa Barbara spoke about her research on the toxicity and the potential for bioaccumulation of nanoparticles in protozoa. She exposed cells to carbon nanotubes, polystyrene beads, silver nanoparticles, and titanium dioxide and looked at effects on cell morphology, division and movement. And she worked with another lab to conduct a food chain experiment to study biomagnification. Her results showed that nanoparticles themselves are not generally toxic to the cells, but they can quickly bioaccumulate. The protozoa can resize particles from nano to macro. She also found that surfactants used to keep nanoparticles in suspension are much more toxic than the nanoparticles themselves.

Daniel Nomura of Scripps Research Institute

Daniel Nomura has been studying the off targets and secondary effects of organophosphorous toxicants using the endocannabinoid system, neuron regulators involved in appetite, pain sensing, memory and immune response. Nomura received his PhD in Nutritional Sciences and Toxicology from UC Berkeley in May 2008 and has continued his research with a group at Scripps Research Institute. They are studying possible therapeutic effects of these nerve agents. The group has found that OP toxicants inhibit an enzyme that is highly expressed in aggressive cancers. These inhibitors are promising as therapeutics for pain, neuroinflammation, and aggressive cancers.

Carolina Reyes of UC Santa Cruz

Carolina Reyes presented her research on how microorganisms influence the fate and transport of arsenic and iron in the environment. Reyes is a doctoral student in Environmental Toxicology at UC Santa Cruz investigating how iron and arsenate reducing bacteria contribute to the release of arsenic into the groundwater using the model organism Shewanella sp. She looked at different strains of the bacteria and reduction pathways to determine which is the most important for arsenic contamination of water. Results showed that in batch incubations, arsenate reduction is greatest among arsenate reducing strains. Under flow conditions, arsenate reduction results in mobilization of arsenic as arsenite. When iron and arsenic reduction simultaneously occur, arsenic is sequestered as arsenite by iron.

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