NATCHITOCHES – A Northwestern State University student earned an award and a cash prize at the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students for his research in molecular biology. Demetri Hill, a junior from Mansfield, presented his work last weekend at the conference in Seattle, Washington. His topic focused on a small rodent, “Is Microtus breweri a separate species?”
Hill was chosen to participate in a 10-week paid research internship at the University of Massachusetts – Boston through a program funded by the National Science Foundation. There, he worked with Dr. Robert Stevenson to study a species of vole.
“Voles are small, thick bodied rodents that are found all across the globe, but our research focused on two particular species, the Microtus breweri which is endemic to Muskeget Island, Massachusetts and Microtus pennsylvanicus which is found throughout mainland Massachusetts and Nantucket Island,” Hill explained. “For over 150 years scientists have speculated the relationship of those two specific voles. Some argue that they are the same while others argue that it is not. Though scientists have done research on these voles, none of them went on to do the molecular work required to rectify this concern. And that's exactly what we wanted to do.
Hill traveled to the Muskeget and Nantucket Islands to trap the two species and extract liver samples from each to perform DNA extraction.
“After returning to the lab, we performed the extraction using a Quigen DNeasy Blood and Tissue Kit and went on to do polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to isolate and amplify mtDNA cytochrome-b,” Hill said. “PCR purification was also a vital step in this process. We then had help to design primers in order to sequence the extracted DNA. Once the sequences were in we were able to analyze the DNA to prove that these two species were not genetically different enough to regard them as a separate species.”
The research is significant for conservation biology and biodiversity.
“The species Microtus breweri was considered to be a vulnerable species, but now we are led to believe that it, in fact, is not vulnerable because it's species is not as small as it was once thought to be,” Hill said.