A Race to the Finish

This week, I assessed a new method of quantifying microplastics ingestion by the nematodes in my research, and luckily it worked. I say luckily because while the fluorescence tests at the MagLab went well, collecting and processing those data points takes much longer, and time is not on my side. I am presenting the preliminary findings from this research at the 18th International Meiofauna Conference the first week of December, but we are required to provide a prerecorded version of our talks no later than next Saturday. Therefore, I am working to get as much data processed as possible before my recording. This week, Dr. Ingels and I discovered that we can verify microbead ingestion in the gut by switching off the bright field light and using only fluorescence, as the microbeads have a unique emission pattern that is visible under the microscope. And rather than working to count every microbead that a nematode ate, we decided that for this conference I would assess the percentage of nematodes that have consumed microplastics in each treatment.

Unfortunately, Florida weather didn't agree with my plans, as we are experiencing Tropical Storm Nicole right now, which means that the university and labs are closed today. I spent last night working late at the lab to get as much data as possible to make up for the loss of today's work period; this weekend I'm taking a mini-vacation, so that's out. That means I will have only 2-3 days left to collect data before I record my presentation. While I am confident in the results of this work so far, I want to have the numbers that matter to people who haven't seen the effort that has gone into this experiment. For you, this week, though, I present one of the first pictures from my experiment, which features a blue microbead inside of a nematode's gut. In this picture, you can see two important items. The first, which I've outlined for you in black at the bottom of the image, is the blue microbead. The second, toward the middle of the photograph and outlined in white, is a portion of the nematode that looks a lot like microplastic, but is part of the cellular structure. These particles not only look alike, but they fluoresce alike, which makes them even harder to differentiate. You may notice, however, that the microbead is rounder, more uniform, and a flat blue color, while the other item is a green-blue and not perfectly round.

​Next week there may not be a post because I will be presenting at a microplastics conference, but tune in the following week for more nematodes and microplastics.

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