Avery Point marine scientist leads unprecedented
effort to chart deepwater sea life

Ann Bucklin, director of marine sciences, uses a genetic analyzer in her laboratory at UConn’s Avery Point campus.

Photo by Peter Morenus

It was the eighth day of a three-week voyage over the most notorious body of water on the planet, the Sargasso Sea, also know as the Bermuda Triangle, which is bordered by major currents in the Atlantic Ocean.

In the heart of the legendary sea, Ann Bucklin, director of marine sciences at UConn’s Avery Point campus, had assembled 23 researchers from more than a dozen countries on a hunt to capture, identify and bar code the genetic makeup of creatures often too small to be seen individually with the naked eye — zooplankton.

“They play a pivotal role in the ocean’s ecosystem,” says Bucklin about the species, “and are a huge engine of productivity in ocean life.”

Mention the word “zooplankton” and most people’s eyes glaze over. However, for Bucklin, these vibrantly colored, minute sea animals that drift with ocean currents represent the last of Earth’s great unexplored frontiers.

Both at sea and from her laboratory, Bucklin is at the forefront of an unprecedented global effort to explore the deepest underwater regions, find zooplankton, bar code their DNA and make the information available on the Internet. 

Retrieval of microscopic organisms from a mile below the ocean surface is more than just scientific curiosity.

Photos by L. Madin/WHOI

With two-thirds of Earth covered by water, an increasing number of marine biologists believe that the planet’s survival may ultimately depend on how well we understand and manage sea life. Zooplankton play a major role in that understanding. 

“They are translators of microbial productivity within the ocean’s ecosystem,” says Bucklin, who is also a Fulbright scholar and Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. 

“Their dispersal and abundance not only reflect the effects of climate change, but also as the primary food of commercial fish, they also play a pivotal role in the ocean’s food chain that we harvest.” 

The Sargasso expedition took place on board the R.H. Brown, a flagship of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

It was part of the Census of Marine Zooplankton, an ocean realm field project of the Census of Marine Life, whose mission is to produce a complete assessment of the oceanic world’s animal kingdom by 2010. 

The expedition research team included UConn doctoral students Paola Batta Lona, Brian Ortman, Ebru Unal and post-doctoral student Rob Jennings.

Traditionally, oceanographers preserve samples collected from sea and take them back to laboratories on land. For the Sargasso voyage, however, Bucklin designed a new, analytical, assembly-line approach.

For the first time, DNA sequencing of zooplankton was attempted on a rocking, rolling ship. Work took place in shifts around the clock, at times during swells of up to 10 feet.

Nevertheless, UConn laboratory equipment enabled the crew of scientists to analyze DNA samples immediately with no preservation required, thereby reducing chance of error. 

The zooplankton were gathered from different depths, the deepest being the Abyssal Region, approximately 15,000 feet below the surface.

“These are mostly unexplored places that possess a huge diversity of species,” says Bucklin, “probably hundreds we’ve never seen before.”

To capture minute creatures measuring 1 to 3 millimeters in length, the researchers used extremely fine nitrex nylon attached to more than 3,300 feet of cable.

“Imagine the largest butterfly net you ever saw,”  says Bucklin.

It was actually a series of nine nets, which, upon reaching certain depths, were electronically opened and then reeled in by mechanical crane.

Attached to the back of each net was a “cod end,” or canister, into which the zooplankton were collected.

These canisters were rushed to the ship’s lab where the “catch” was then scrutinized by taxonomists conversant with the species. Some of what they saw was completely unfamiliar to them.

“We expected to find new species,” says Bucklin, “because we were sampling in the deepest parts of the ocean where tiny animals are rarely captured.”

The organisms were then cataloged and prepared for bar coding. To that end, Bucklin arranged for one of two genetic analyzers from her laboratory to be brought aboard.

The machine, about the size of a freezer, analyzes DNA and then assigns it a bar code. That information is then transferred to a computer file where it will eventually become part of a global database identifying all known plants and animals on Earth.

“Bar coding is about speeding up the acquisition of knowledge,” says Bucklin. “DNA is a universal language that provides a key to understanding the diversity of life.”

The Sargasso expedition returned with more than 100 bar codes done and thousands of zooplankton samples representing some 500 species, several dozen of which are believed previously undiscovered.

However, with 7,000 known genuses, or types, of these animals in the world, and estimates that twice that number actually exists, much work lies ahead.

Back in her third-floor office overlooking Long Island Sound, Bucklin is planning her next expedition, this time in the Southeastern Atlantic off the coast of Africa.

“This research will provide a baseline against which future generations can measure changes to the zooplankton and their provinces caused by pollution, over- fishing, climate change and other shifting environmental conditions,” says Bucklin.

“But it’s ultimately about gaining a better understanding of how today’s oceans function as a system and how that system interfaces with the rest of our planet.”

— Ron Meshberg

Breast cancer device
moves to clinical trials

The imaging device developed by a UConn researcher that will provide more accurate breast cancer diagnoses and treatment assessment has advanced to wider clinical trials through a four-year, $1.36 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

The invention by Quing Zhu, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering in the School of Engineering, combines near infrared and ultrasound imaging to overcome the limitations that plague individual technologies.

The NIH award will allow her to refine the technique and validate initial, promising results in distinguishing benign and early-stage malignant breast tumors from a larger patient pool.

Approximately 300 breast cancer patients will be recruited from the UConn Health Center and Hartford Hospital to participate in the study.

Last year, Zhu was honored with a Connecticut Women of Innovation award in recognition of her outstanding contributions toward science.

In addition, she was selected a Donaghue Investigator by the Donaghue Foundation, West Hartford, Conn., and in spring 2007, she was elected to membership in the Connecticut Academy for Science and Engineering.

Photo by Peter Morenus

A new ornamental grass developed by Mark Brand, professor of plant science in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, is being produced by Ball Horticultural Co., the world’s largest breeder-producer of ornamental plants.

The grass is known as Ruby Ribbons, a new switch grass (Panicum virgatum) with blue-green base foliage that turns a deep wine-red color months earlier than other red switch grasses.

Brand spent more than a decade developing the new grass, which is being marketed through UConn’s Center for Science and Technology Commercialization.

Photo by John Cooley

A team of biologists from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences descended on northern Illinois this past spring to map the mass emergence of millions of 17-year cicadas.

They used a global positioning system (GPS) in combination with computerized data entry to accurately track the spectacle of a brood of periodical cicadas emerging. It was the first time the technology has been used for such a purpose.

The UConn researchers were led by Christine Simon, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and a leading expert on periodical cicadas, and John Cooley, assistant professor in residence.

They were mapping the emergence of Brood XIII cicadas, which hatched in 1990.

Periodical cicada broods usually take about two weeks to emerge, depending on temperatures.

The periodicals, which differ from the less numerous, shorter-lived annual cicadas, live underground as nymphs for 13 or 17 years, where they feed on the roots of plants.

When the insects emerge, they finish maturing, mate, lay eggs in the twigs of trees, and die, leaving a litter of shells behind.

The eggs hatch, the nymphs fall to the ground, and the cycle begins again. On one of the first days of the Brood XIII’s emergence, more than 100,000 cicadas surrounded a single tree in a forest preserve in suburban Chicago, Cooley says.

During their brief time above ground, cicadas dominate the landscape. They coat the trees, and their shells coat the ground. Their synchronized, dawn-to-dusk buzz — a common sound effect in horror movies—is so loud that biologists counting them often wear ear protection.

The maps developed by the UConn researchers will help biologists understand more about the range of this species, where it will reemerge in 2024, and how its distribution is affected by other broods that emerge in different years.

In 2008, Brood XIV is due to come out over much of the eastern U.S., from Maryland to Cape Cod (skipping Connecticut), from Long Island to Ohio, and as far south as Tennessee.

Researchers in the School of Pharmacy say the most popular herbal supplement in the United States, echinacea, cuts the chances of catching the common cold by 58 percent and reduces the duration of the common cold by 1.4 days.

The UConn study was published in the July 2007 issue of the prominent British medical journal, The Lancet Infectious Diseases.

The study, known as a meta-analysis, combined the results of 14 clinical trials involving more than 1,300 patients followed for echinacea’s effect on preventing the common cold and more than 1,600 patients followed for the herbal supplement’s effect on limiting the duration of the common cold.

The UConn findings stand in contrast to a study published recently in the New England Journal of Medicine, which discounted echinacea’s cold-fighting effects.

Instead, the UConn research bolsters a previous study that found the herb to be an effective treatment for the common cold and also provides new evidence of its added cold-prevention benefits.

Because the UConn study focused on randomized, placebo-controlled, peer-reviewed studies, the researchers were able to observe the effects of echinacea that smaller, individual studies — including the New England Journal of Medicine study — were not able to determine alone.

UConn researchers determined that echinacea reduced the incidence of contracting the common cold whether it was taken alone or in combination with other herbal supplements.

They also found echinacea reduced the chance of catching the common cold whether study subjects were exposed to viruses naturally or inoculated with a particular virus as part of the study.

“The take-home message from our study is that echinacea does indeed have powerful cold-prevention and cold-treatment benefits,” says Craig Coleman, assistant professor of pharmacy practice and lead author of the study.

“The significance of that finding becomes clear when you consider Americans suffer from 1 billion colds annually and spend about $1.5 billion annually for doctor’s visits and another $2 billion annually on non-prescription cough and cold treatments.”

Coleman says future studies are needed to control for variables such as echinacea species and product preparation as well as to determine the proper dose before echinacea can become the first-line of prevention and treatment for the common cold.

UConn researchers included C. Michael White, associate professor of pharmacy practice; research fellows Sachin A. Shah and Mike Rinaldi; and former research fellow Stephen Sanders.

Photo by Peter Morenus

A UConn hearing expert has adapted human audiology technology to dogs and opened what appears to be the first site in the United States that offers hearing loss testing for canines.

Peter Scheifele, animal bioacoustics researcher in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, says animal audiology is an emerging field of study and the only other similar lab is in the United Kingdom.

Hearing loss in dogs is now recognized in more than 60 breeds, he notes.

Scheifele tests the dogs’ hearing using computers that record the electrical activity of the brain, known as the Auditory Brainstem Response. Equipment is modified to fit floppy ears and increased hearing range in order to measure a change in the dog’s brain waves when a noise is produced.

Because the test measures brain waves, it does not rely on the dog’s having a conscious reaction to the noise.

One key part of this research, Scheifele says, is to establish a baseline for what “normal” canine waveforms look like.

“We must build a database using every dog we test, and we’re testing normal dogs, deaf dogs and dogs going deaf,” he says.

“As we get more data from hundreds of dogs, we can begin to establish some hearing norms for canines.”

Scheifele anticipates the bioacoustics lab will eventually serve a broad market. Ultimately, he hopes that having opened the UConn bioacoustic lab will lead to the opening of animal audiology clinics nationwide.