Microscopic Marvels: Dr. Dorota Porazinska

A conversation University of Florida student Charles Overdevest and Dr. Dorota Porazinska an associate professor in the Department of Entomology and Nematology at the University of Florida. We spoke about her path to becoming a professor, the structure of academic science, and her work on an NSF PurSUiT grant funded study about nematodes in the Nebraska Sandhills. Listen in to this episode and interview of other members of the PurSUiT team by other students in our Microscopic Marvels series.

Transcript

 Hi everyone. Welcome to our streaming science microscopic Marvel series where tiny organisms are a big deal. Streaming Science is a student driven science outreach platform that introduces listeners to real world scientists and professionals in the agriculture and natural resources fields. I'm your host Max, a student majoring in environmental science at the University of Florida.

In this series, we're talking to scientists, ranchers, students, and storytellers about nematodes. There are nearly invisible microscopic worms that can tell us about our environment. 

In this episode, you hear from Dr. Dorota Porazinska, a professor of nematology at the University of Florida. She's one of the principal investigators on an NSF PurSUiT project, studying the diversity of nematodes in the Nebraska Sandhills. We discussed our journey to becoming an academic, the work of a scientist, and of course, nematodes.

 Let's learn more about our guests and the microscopic marvels around us.

Okay. Could you tell us your name, where you work, and your job title? 

My name is Dorota Porazinska. I work at the Entomology and Nematology department, and my position is associate professor. 

Can you tell us a little bit about your educational background?

Certainly a lot of going to school. My first masters really come from Poland, university of  Nicolaus Copernicus, where I, majored in biology and focused on ecology. Then I moved to the us stumbled on the Institute of Ecology. Right now it is known as the Odum School of Ecology. I got my master's in Soil Ecology, and there I fell in love with.

Nematodes I followed to the University of Florida, the Department of Entomology and Nematology, and got my PhD. 

All right, so you spoke about getting a couple of master's degrees, and I'd like to hear about how you chose a path, you were also at one point a business student, and so when you came to the US it wasn't actually to be a scientist, it was to act as a business student. So could you speak about how you ended up in science rather than the business field? 

Yes. When I was doing my biology degree in Poland, I also did a side gig in business and administration.

It was largely driven by my father having business. I thought that I would help him. That provided me an opportunity to come to the us. Initially I came to the US on a business visa, to do a business internship. And it was in Athens, Georgia, university of Georgia, where there is this wonderful institute of ecology or back then called Institute of Ecology.

When I started the business internship, I quickly realized this is not my cup of tea. Being curious, I. Took many walks across the, UGA campus bumped into the institute, walked in, and I was surprised to see this wonderful statue of Eugene Odum. Really the father of ecology, you can call it the father of American ecology.

Back in Poland when I. Got fascinated by ecology. We learned a lot of principles, ecological principles according to Eugene Odum. So this was just like meeting your friend. I also learned that back then he was still alive, he was emeritus professor, still doing research, and so I thought that it was.

Something special and I started thinking that since this business path was not entirely right for me, I got in touch with several professors one of them was Dr. David Coleman, a soil ecologist, got him excited to accept me as a master student and the rest of his a yeah.

History. One of the major things I think, that I chose ecology or science over business is that science, doing science, although it requires funding we don't really do science without money. Is not the ultimate goal. It's basically a medium. And that supports larger, questions. And allows for discovery and being an explorer  and money's just  providing, but not the main thing.

And so that was the main reason. 

You mentioned coming to Athens and seeing the Odum Center and how that was the name you recognized from your education. And you mentioned that the university you went to in Poland was the Copernicus School, 

University of Nicolaus Copernicus. 

So these are names of people and science is a world of people, could you speak about. The interpersonal connections and what role that plays in science and making progress.

Yeah, this is a very good question I feel that I was not born a scientist. I was not born a biologist, not an ecologist, not soil ecologist, none of it. All I had were people that came in my life at good times and got me excited. Their charisma, their knowledge, their connecting with me, and guiding me and learning the world first in high school, I never really thought that I would think about biology.

I did not like biology. Last year of high school, a biology teacher turned everything around to the point that I wanted to pursue a biology degree at a college. In college, my first University of Nicolaus Copernicus. I went through all sorts of biology subjects, the teacher that got me excited was the instructor.

Of ecology. Nobody really spoke to me more than a soil ecologist, Dr. David Coleman, in his lab, he had a PhD student. Christine Atma. She came to study under his supervision from the Netherlands. And knew quite a bit about nematodes, she showed me the world of nematodes and she was so excited about them that I really wanted that excitement.

And so this is really through the connections of people that guide you, that just give you what they know. And connect with you and connect with the larger, environment. So that is how I became who I am. 

That's great. I think that really speaks to like the power that early education has and shaping who we become.

And I think I share a similar sentiment when I was, a high school student. I knew science was something cool. I fell in love with environmental science because I had a charismatic teacher who, made science not only like. Abundantly accessible, but really fun and engaging.

We would do these field trips where we'd go, just around the school and do stuff. And it's like everything around you can be connected to some sort of scientific principle understanding science is understanding the world. 

So as a professor, you have a very busy schedule. A lot of people might describe professors, as their life is their work, but obviously, you do things outside of your job. You've mentioned that you like running in marathons triathlons and Iron Mans, which is really incredible.

And so I wanted to speak to you about how you would connect those activities with your work, if you saw any comparisons, similarities.  

Yes, particularly the endurance events, sport events, really speak quite a bit to what we do in science. There are, several parallels with science or comparisons between these sports and science.

First is the patience and perseverance. You need to give yourself enough time and be strong, resilient to get to your goals. It is not like you can roll off your couch and do a marathon if you think about yourself, a competitive. Athlete and you want to do well, you want to win, 

you really need to be patient and persevere. Do this over and over be detailed monitoring. Be observing yourself. Follow protocols. Know what's going on. Be very observant. Repeating your drills, repeating your experiments. So this is, this is exactly the same what you do in science.

There are also disappointments challenges. You, you might feel that not always training is easy, may be difficult, not pleasant with science, you can fail experiments. They may not go your way, but at the end you learn valuable lessons and grow you find new solutions, you stick with it.

You are diligent and you eventually, succeed, through hard work, patience, putting time in, resilience learning lessons. You succeed. So there is the accomplishment at the end potentially, but you do need to put. Hard work and need to put a lot of time. 

Would you make the analogy that publishing a paper is comparable to running the event?

So all the work that goes into, creating the experiment and running it, practice trials, all of the learning that you do is like training for marathon. The marathon itself could be seen as publishing, would you say it's a fair comparison?

Yeah. This is your end goal to run that marathon or a triathlon. And the end goal of doing research, conducting experiments, coming with the idea, spending time and collecting data, analyzing this data. Then really just putting that data in the context of other scientists work. You need to do a lot of reading and reviewing and then writing it and rewriting it, sending to your collaborators, co-authors to revise it.

Then you go back and rewrite it. And so eventually you end up at this day where you can submit your. Manuscript to a publisher and then you wait, and then you might get rejected. You might get accepted. Just depends on the quality of your work. So just like with the marathon, if you did not really put your time in and work, you might be running, yeah, maybe some mediocre marathon, but you might not really succeed at what you really wanted.

You might be rejected at the finish line. 

And so we've talked about, how there is this interplay between all of the works of science that have put out, everything builds on what has been previously published. And so, I wanna talk to you about basic or foundational science research, which is what the project that we're gonna be discussing a little bit, started as and what it continues to be.

How would you explain basic or foundational science to a member of the public who might not understand why it could be important to study? And you can make it specific to, the experiment that we're gonna be talking about, or, broadly if you prefer 

In life, we never really think about, basic science or basic research because we are just ripping the benefits of the basic science in the form of.

Applications. But every practical application really starts with basic research. Just like I can make an analogy if you want to build the house, you really want to invest quite a bit of putting strong foundation. So that's what basic science is. So without that foundation your house will be just a house made of carts.  Basic science basically provides the.

Basis, the foundation for any applications that we can develop in the future. Things like internet, a lot of medications, medical treatments, sustainable energy sources. This all started with basic science and then it was. Taken to a different level to be applied so it can be used.

Yeah, and I think that's interesting. A lot of people, when they think of research, they're thinking of applied science. The majority of the research funding in the United States goes to the military, and that is a lot of applied science but it is also dependent on these foundational studies, 

the, public's mischaracterization of them is that you're sort of just poking around trying to figure things out and that's a waste of time. I think that's actually a fair characterization for the first part, where you really don't know what you're gonna discover most of the time.

But the discoveries that we don't expect often are the most impactful. There are plenty of examples, where we found, this protein or this gene that has resourced, in some sort of medicine or, something to that effect that's been very impactful. So, speaking specifically about the research study that we are here to discuss 

mm-hmm.

Could you. Elaborate more on what it is, how it's basic science and how it can be applied to, maybe some applied science in the future. What useful information we could get from studying nematodes?   

We are studying.

Nematodes in the Nebraska Sandhills, and we are interested in these environments that are somewhat providing an extreme environment for, for these nematodes. And the extreme environment is in the form of alkalinity. Some of these lakes, express alkalinity that parallels. Bleach. Not many organisms want to live in that environment, and nematodes are one of the few that do want to live and actually live.

So it, it turns out that they somehow adapted to living in such harsh environment. And so we are interested in uncovering what these nematodes are, how. They are able to survive in these environments we want to basically know what's the limit, of living in such a extreme environment. We like to study them in these extreme environments because.

These systems, these communities, these organisms are much simplified typically in comparison to normal conditions. Normal conditions typically have very complex communities of organisms so it's hard to study them often. You have a. Difficult time isolating different reasons why they are surviving in these environments when the communities are simplified, it's much easier to track, different factors that potentially influence their, their living them, them living there More importantly.

The Nebraska Sun Health also undergo, are undergoing, responses to climate change. So imagine that these environments might be extreme right now, but with higher temperatures, less precipitation, these lakes will become even more extreme. So we can. Just in real time be observing their adaptability, their potential to either make it or be gone.

And so these environments also provide a model system for predicting what potentially could happen to other systems, like the more favorable environment. So that's why we are. Wanting to figure out basically how they're surviving and predict what potentially could happen to other organisms given the environmental change happening.

Okay. And so you spoke a little bit there about, extreme environments, talking about the Sandhills and their alkalinity, which is for those who may not know. Refers to on the pH scale, very basic, levels.  Like she said, bleach is an example of a very basic or alkaline, and that's due to the, amount of salts that are there.

If I'm, if I'm not, yes, 

the concentrations of potassium, sodium, and chloride, in particular. 

Okay. 

Yeah. 

What other types of extreme conditions have you studied nematodes in and what makes these different conditions so interesting to study? 

Yes. So being a scientist, it's really awesome that we can go to all sorts of, different ecosystems.

In my lifetime, I have. Participated in several projects conducted under extreme environments, one of them is the Antarctic dry valleys. Most of the Antarctic continent is covered by snow and ice, but there's a small percent of Antarctica that is free of ice. The 

dry valleys are considered the driest, coldest and windiest deserts on earth. And you would think that nothing lives there. And early explorers really thought that this world is just horrible. Like there is nothing there but, as scientists started investigating the environment, they just.

I started realizing that even this environment supports, quite a bit of life and nematodes are one of them. So nematodes took me to Antarctica. Another great system that we had a chance to study were the highest strata volcanoes in the Atacama Desert.

We wanted to see how far in elevation, life can go on. This system is supposed to represent, similar conditions to Mars. Nematodes, were not there. We didn't find any of them, so that was disappointing. But plenty of microbes. So that's another, just another interesting thing about these.

Soil and sediment environments provide, great conditions for microbes. Microbes are everywhere. Another great ecosystem that I had a chance to study are the high Alpines in the Colorado Rocky Mountains. So, so we know that, organisms are adapted to. Conditions, associated with temperature and solar radiation and things like that.

And with the climate warming, a lot of plants and animals just keep migrating to higher elevations to escape the warmer conditions that they're not adapted to. And so high alpine, so this is at the somewhat. 4,000 meters above sea level. So it's, it's pretty high, there. Generally, typically these environments are free of vegetation, but they're becoming more and more vegetated.

So that's from the above ground. We were obviously interested in that moving edge of life. Expressed in the above grant, we wanted to know whether the same happens in the soils 

That increase in range for plants higher up into altitudes is due to global warming. 

Yes. Uh, and yes, the, the short answer is yes.

Uh, normally the highest alpine is covered with snow for most of the year. The. Amount of time that the high peaks are free of snow is too short to support the full life cycle of plants, but with climate warming, the snow melts earlier and the ground is free of snow for a longer time.

The plants can go up there and establish themselves and complete their life cycles, reproduce, produce more plants. And so, yeah. So  this is happening not only in the Colorado, Rocky Mountains, but all over the world. 

And so you mentioned how some of these extreme environments can model what it might be like on Mars if you had to bring a particular nematode with you to Mars as, 

 If humanity were to try to colonize it, could you name one that would be most useful for having humanity? Civilization exist on another planet? 

It is, a hard choice because, nematodes are so amazingly diverse that to choose one over another, creates a lot of challenges.

However, there is already one nematode that has been taken to space. That nematode is called ceno Rubb Elegance. It's a model nematode. It's an interesting nematode that has been used in genetics in e evolutionary developmental studies.

It's a nematode that has a very short lifecycle,  so it is useful  to. Study to provide some insights for larger organisms, in all sorts of respects, ranging from the complexity and functioning of the nervous system to reproduction, to development, to how one cell splits to two cells and creates an organism.

So there's just a lot of research, with this nematode. So probably that would be my choice because we already have such a. Strong background information on this nematode, then we can just basically keep building, on it. But I don't know exactly which nematodes, but several of them already made it to space to see how nematodes respond to gravity and, and all sorts of things like that.

That's very exciting, to hear about. All the places that the nematodes can go. I'd like to ask you about a more technical aspect of research, which is funding. This study was initially funded by a seed grant and later by an NSF grant. Could you please explain the difference between these two?

Yes. So first science requires money, without money, there is no science. When we get hired by universities and we are faculty, we don't only teach, we also do science. Most of us have responsibilities of doing research universities pay our salaries, but they don't provide the money to do research.

So this is our responsibility to. Come up with great ideas write proposals and submit them to funding agencies such as National Science Foundation or NIH or USDA or whatever, funding agencies are there. And so to write a competitive proposal, you really need to have already some science done if you don't have even this little money to.

Do some initial preliminary data collection. Your proposal will not be competitive. So universities, occasionally provide you with some seed funding. This is a very small pool of money for maybe one year, to support your graduate student. You can test, provide some sort of proof of concept that what you think.

Is important to do will be feasible and supports your hypothesis. Then you have a chance to collect some data, show that it is aligned with your ideas, and then you can develop those really very competitive proposal and that really expands on what you want to do.

And these are typically multi-year. Research proposals where you can hire one, maybe two graduate students, maybe a postdoctoral associate where you have money to buy all the supplies and  then play in the lab or in the field. The seed money is just to generate that initial data.

These are also competitive grants, so they, you know, it's not like you can just ask University to give you money and they just give you, it has to have,  all the components and good reasoning, rational, and the outputs that you are going to be producing. Later on they will go to a bigger proposal and that will be the main beef you'll be bringing home.

And so the funding from these sources goes not only to pay for research equipment or travel, but it also goes to paying graduate students.  There's this other side of academia that we're doing research, we're also teaching, people to become researchers.

So it's this sort of self. Fulfilling cycle, where by doing the work, we are learning how to do it, at least for the graduate students, and I'm sure undergraduate students as well in certain instances. Could you speak about what some of your graduate students have done after working with you, uh, where they've gone off to and, and sort of what the value in, uh, having money for teaching as a part of these grants, what the use in that is?

Yes, so generally we have been getting majority of the money for doing research, and so I have a lot of other responsibilities than like, I could not be able to be in the lab and executing these projects that we propose in the ex in, in the proposals. So what we do is we hire graduate students or undergraduate students, and they are the real force that goes to the field, goes to the lab, and that's what we say what we do.

We as faculty, we're just mostly in our teaching positions. We are writing proposals, bringing money, writing, publishing. Mentoring the students so they can become me when I can't really do any more research. So that's that, that, that, that, that's how it, how it works. And so the idea is that once these students go through my program and work on these projects, they will graduate and get jobs at universities as first postdoctoral.

Associates and then that will lead them to become a professor or they can go to work for industry. They can be working for nonprofit organizations that might be doing research. They could be going to, national parks and manage ecosystems. So there are just various ways where these. People can go, but they will become professionals applying the knowledge they gained in the lab or in the field  to  future professional, situations.

And so. You would say a lot of students, they are studying nematology in graduate school, sort of like how you study different aspects of biology and ecology, but it's not certain they'll work as hematologists. They could do a lot because these lab skills are really transferrable and the process of research is shared along a lot of the same scientific fields.

Yes. You, you somewhat, maybe you want your students to follow your. Favorite pet, like I love soil biodiversity, for instance. And I always hope that the students that I have in my lab will also go to soil biodiversity, research later on in their life. But the main things that we really want the students to get out of this experience are the.

Transferable skills across different fields. The eagerness to learn, critical thinking, problem solving, skills, you know, how you, how you solve a problem. So this is independent, whether it's in nematology or ecology or any field. So these are just very large skills, how you write, how you think, how you.

Uh, organize yourself, um, even how you put together a protocol, how you observe, what's the problem, how you assess. These are just very transferable and they don't really need to be applied in any science. It can be just in life. 

So in this pursuant study, what was your specific role? As one of the PIs,

I am responsible to provide a more general context for the particular taxa we decided to study to make it more transparent, what does it mean? Ecological context. If you wanted to study human being, you wouldn't want to just study this human being in a vacuum 

you would want to expose that human being to some. Surrounding interactions with other organisms, influence of environmental conditions and things like this. This is precisely what we are doing with our nematode subject. Typically, when we describe new species, we just take them out of the context and so we don't really know.

We know how they look. We might know how they behave, but we really don't know what that means in the real environment. And so what we want to do is provide that larger picture. Where do these nematodes fit? And so this larger ecological context, can provide us a better, more holistic. Understanding of these organisms, how they developed, how they adapted, how they are functioning in the system, how they interact with other organisms, how they are influenced by others, but maybe how they are influencing others.

So this is my role. We are looking at other nematodes than the particular tax that. We targeted in this proposal. We also look at the interactions with microbes, bacteria, fungi and other microscopic animals, but also chemistry that is present in these environments. It's, a holistic approach.

Thank you. And for my final question, if you could put as a percentage, how much of your success as a scientist you would contribute to? Or excuse me, at tribute to hard work and to luck. 'cause you had mentioned coming here to the States, being in Athens, not knowing you wanna be science meeting someone, well walking around, u G's campus.

But you'd also mentioned the perseverance and hard work that had gone into these different studies. Obviously a lot of education. Where would you put these numbers at? 

Yes. This is not all that difficult to answer. It's hard work, hard work, hard work, and more hard work. Hard work is essential in any science.

It helps you to become an expert. You really need to show that you know what you are talking about, that you understand your subject. Without this hard work, pure luck really means not much. There is some component of, of luck. You really, it's important to be in the right place at the right time.

Meeting the right people, hiring the right students. Working with right collaborators. So it is very, very important. But the hard work provides you with the knowledge skills and expertise to capitalize on, on these opportunities that come your way with without it. Nothing really happens.

So I think that, for instance, when I came to the US, if I did not really put much work in knowing some ecology, I don't think nobody would offer me a research assistantship to study, to be part of a soil ecology lab. You really need to do some work. 

Okay. Yeah, so sounds like stay in school, keep working hard and eventually some sort of opportunity will present itself to you that you can capitalize on.

Yeah. But I think that hard work doesn't really have to be. No fun. A lot of stuff that we do is fun. It is just a combination that you, yeah, you really need to do some hard work, but you are still playing and school is the best place to be playing. You have nothing else to do but to learn, and this is the most exciting thing.

It's. Putting that investment of knowledge in you. I think that's the most important thing. And you, you should be thinking as school, as fun, learning as fun, as hardworking, as fun. And when you merge those two, it becomes fun. 

Thank you so much. It was a pleasure interviewing you  

thank you Max.

Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Microscopic Marvels. I'm your host Max, and I hope that you learn something about the world of academic research.

For more information or to listen to other episodes in this series, visit streaming science.com funding for this series, and the nematode research discussed in the episodes comes from a National Science Foundation. poorly sampled and unknown taxa grant  awarded to researchers at the University of Nebraska and Florida.