Today I walked into the greenhouse and observed over 100 tobacco seedlings peeking a pair of immature leaves out of the freshly watered soil. Over a week ago I planted five trays of tobacco seed as part of the research project I am starting this semester. Just over a week has past since I first filled the trays with fresh soil and laid seed down in the freshly dug furrows. Now there is life. To me that is amazing. The seedlings are so small yet complex at the same time. Months down the road the lives of these plants will provide life to tobacco worms. This is who we are. Life has been breathed into all of us by God. We are such small, insignificant beings, but at the same time we are complex and capable of great things. Just like the seedlings, each of us feed into the lives of others.
My sophomore year I was treasurer of Purdue's Biochemistry Club. As an officer each of us had the responsibility of setting up guest speakers for meetings. At the time I had a minor in Entomology (today it is a second major), and I knew that a professor in the department taught a class on insect biochemistry and physiology so I sent out an email to try to express interest in having him give a guest lecture. Well, he accepted. This professor was Dr. Larry Murdock. He gave a tantalizing presentation on his work with the storage and preservation of cowpea in Africa in an effort to guard the grain against the cowpea weevil, an insect that destroys large quantities of the local supply every season. Since the project was initiated over 100 million people have been helped by the effort Dr. Murdock's lab puts forth. With over $24 million in monetary assistance from the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, the lab has developed new technology, which has improved the local economy and effectively helped to curb food shortages in several African countries. I was hooked without knowing.
Sophomore year I was already working in a Biochemistry lab, but the work felt empty. While I was dozens of valuable techniques, the work felt empty. My heart wasn't in the work, and time dragged on for two semesters.
After the spring semester of sophomore year, I quit my Biochemistry lab position without another lab position offer available to fill the void. Following my summer in Costa Rica, I suddenly felt compelled to contact the professor who talked to Biochemistry Club a year ago, Dr. Murdock. Soon I had a reply and a meeting with him. He was interested in having me work in his lab on a project he has had on the back-burner for years. The fall semester was busy and tumultuous, but I had just enough free time to lay some ground work for the project. I would be working on a chemical retention project using an entomological model organism, Manduca sexta (tobacco horn worm).
I know it probably looks disgusting to anyone reading, but to me this tiny life form is a creature of beauty. Some might think that a moth has little to offer. In actuality my work with this critter has the potential power to drastically change the lives of 100-200 million people, and I believe that God has called me to use my gifts to make a difference in this way.
Now that fall has passed, spring semester has arrived, and now it is time to put the plan Dr. Murdock and I laid out in the fall into action. Ultimately our goal is to use a new technology to determine if a stack of genetically modified cowpea should be deployed in the African countries that Dr. Murdock's lab works with. If we conclude that the GMO crop should be introduced the lives of millions of people will be positively altered, as the crop would increase yields more than ten fold. Of course this end goal is years away. My focus on the manner is developing a technology to accomplish this.
Through my project I am testing if chemicals ingested my larvae are retained and can be traced in the adult insect. I will be doing this by feeding the horn worms three different sets of diets: 1) artificial diet 2) artificial diet spiked with trace chemicals 3) a natural tobacco diet. Once the larvae metamorphose into adults the specimens will have their surface waxes and wing scales tested for traces of chemicals added to the diet or chemicals found naturally in tobacco. So why is this important? Why do I care? How does this help people in Africa?
Well, if we are able to detect trace chemicals from the larval diet then it can be concluded that larval diet can be determined from running a chemical profile on an adult insect. GMO crops can show resistance develop among natural pest populations because the crop kills 99.99% of the pest species. Unfortunately, that 0.01% that remains breeds and suddenly the new insect population is resistant to the control method. The technology I am working with will be able to demonstrate if any selected insect pest has secondary, tertiary, or even quaternary host plants. If the pest feeds on more than one crop then 99.99% of the population isn't suddenly in ruin. A refuge population then remains so the rest of the insects are not resistant due to natural selection of the resistant pests. If I can prove the theory, we can test if the pests of cowpea have secondary hosts, and if they do we can safely deploy the modified cowpea crop.
So where am I now? Not very far... So far we have the chemical components that will be used in the spiked diet, components to create an artificial diet, and Maduca eggs on back order. Also I have soil.
Just over a week ago I planted five trays of tobacco seed in a greenhouse. I have taken care of and watered the seeds everyday over the past ten days or so, including on the days when that awesome blizzard hit. When I went into the greenhouse a couple days ago there were two tiny seedlings poking up out of the soil. Today there were over one hundred...
God's plan starts with a seedling. A seedling can change the world if you give it the chance.
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