A Seedling, A Hope

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.

A Start

If you haven't noticed already the title of this blog, "Metamorphose," is strikingly scientific so let's start off with Merriam Webster's definition of the term.

Meta-mor-pho-sis (noun)
1.
a) a change of physical form, structure, or substance especially by supernatural means
b) a striking alteration in appearance, character, or circumstance
2.

a typically marked and more or less abrupt development change in the form or structure of an animal (as a butterfly or a frog) occurring subsequent to birth or hatching

If you know me well or otherwise you probably know that I like insects so clearly I must be focusing on definition two, right? Wrong. I may refer to my entomological work on a regular basis, but definition two is not my intention with this blog. My goal more closely follows definition "one b." Over the period of my thus far brief life I have been offered countless opportunities which result in a change change in appearance, character, and/or circumstance. If you were to ask people from various times in my life to describe Dan Martin, they would all probably shoot back with something completely different. I like to joke that I have mirror syndrome, but in reality my circumstances and views are constantly evolving.

I write this blog as a medium to share through a story, my story. I believe God calls us to do certain things with our lives at certain moments, which results in a change, a distortion, a twist of our being. None of these things are bad, but rather they are positive, as they alter our lives, teaching us invaluable lessons.

A caterpillar knows not what he will become, yet a butterfly knows what he once was.

For most of us life starts around the time we start going to school. Not literally of course, but not many of us can recall much before then. For me grade school was a trial that shaped me into the nerd that I am now. Everyone finds their niche at a young age, all for different reasons. For me it was a combination of the brutal nature of children, my love of books, and my respect for authority. All of these things shaped me from preschool to eighth grade. I am an only child so I always had problems fitting it. Usually some awkward action on my part would result in being cast out by a peer, which would only then result in more awkward interactions. Naturally, I turned to a comfort of mine, books. I took to reading at a young age. Mostly my parents are to blame since they raised me in a very cultured and science based environment. Not that I am complaining though! Of course the weird kid in the corner reading every single book on the solar system from the school library isn't exactly the ring leader so the awkwardness was only further enforced. Alas, the naive little Dan knew no better than turning to a teach or adult in situations of awkwardness is not a way to make the situation any better. Grammar school for me can pretty much be summed up by "awkward, nerdy, and unpopular."

For most of us the definitive step number two is high school. In high school things got a little better. I had been swimming competitively since the age of seven so I decided to join the swim team. It seemed like over night I was hurled from a fish bowl into a swimming pool. Suddenly there were 200 people in my class, instead of 20. The awkward kid reading a book in the corner that everyone noticed was suddenly the awkward smart swimmer kid that few people noticed. High school offered me something I thought I needed, an environment in which I could blend in and excel. While athletics and academics took off, other aspects of my life began to fall apart. Particularly, my spiritual side began to crumble into disarray. I was raised in the Catholic school system, and by this time I was questioning everything. A lot of things just didn't make sense, and I wanted nothing to do with it. By junior year, my faith was completely broken and athletically I was in shambles, but I didn't care. I had a small close knit group of friends, and academically I was accelerating. Under the surface lied me, I was changing as a person, evolving. At this point in my life you could essentially throw the tag "emo" on me. I loved music and introspection more than most things, but deep down I was lonely. Something was missing...

College changes everything. While the upgrade from a fish bowl to a swimming pool may seem drastic, the upgrade from a pool to an ocean is even greater. Purdue provided the expansive environment I truly needed to develop as a person. Finally, I had a place where I could be ME. Unfortunately, this new found freedom was a little too much for this spoiled only child off his leash for the first time. Freshman and sophomore year became completely about Dan. Individualism took hold, and I was more "emo" than ever. I cared most about myself, but on the flip side something deep down called for a communal connection, and even more so a spiritual one. While I had found a close group of friends whom I am still close with, the group was exclusive. I needed more.

What came next is hard to describe in words. Prior to the end of sophomore year I met someone incredibly close to my heart now who showed me my first real glimpse of God. Previously, I had dismissed Christianity as a whole as a simple off shoot of Catholicism and declared myself an agnostic. Well, God put this person in my life as a wake up call that I desperately needed. I was given a nudge by someone who was a stranger at the time. It was just a nudge, but what happened next was a result of that selfless act.

That summer I spent three months in Costa Rica. The first two weeks involved traveling around the country and the weeks that followed I would be helping with a communal study of the insect and bird populations in coffee fields. As part of the travel component we visited the Bri Bri people who live at the Costa Rica-Panama border. To reach the Bri Bri we traveled down river in dug out canoes and we descended into the jungle where we would stay for two days. The first night with the Bri Bri people was the most restless night of my life. The night was spent under a mosquito net in a palm pressed hut. Constant sweat ran down my entire body, and as I lied there drenched and in my boxers, I could hear a distant jungle cat. I prayed most of that night. It was nothing formal, it was a conversation. That night was long and filled with sweat, but it was joyous. That night was the first night that I felt truly connected with my Lord. The morning that followed, I got up and watched the sun rise. No one else on the trip got up for several hours. In that time I sat with the Bri Bri people, and took in the surroundings. Never before had I left so content.

Soon we returned and my internship started. I was dropped off at a host family's home, and I was alone, truly alone for the first time in my life. The following 2.5 months was incredibly difficult, but in those 2.5 months I got to know myself and my maker better than I thought was possible. When you are essentially alone in a country and you have to fend for yourself you truly get to know yourself and God. In that time I had two things that kept me going. The first was prayer and connecting with the One whom I had connected with on May 29th. The second was writing letters. Over the period of 3 months in Costa Rica, I wrote to the one who encouraged me back at Purdue at the end of sophomore year. By the end of the trip we had exchanged 88 letters each. That one person was Allyson who I have known for such a brief time, but unknowingly she gave me a nudge many months prior to the trip that transformed me forever.

Upon returning to Purdue everything was different. Suddenly, community mattered. I became much more intentional about everything. I became more involved in all aspects of my life. Fall semester I laid ground work for a lab position with Dr. Larry Murdock that I am taking part in now, I became more involved with my church, and I grew closer to Allyson.

Today is February 3rd, and a lot has changed from a year ago. I physically resemble the person I was last year (minus the haircut), but I have been changed on so many other levels. Of course, I am not yet a butterfly, but I continue to grow as I walk down the road of life.

A caterpillar knows not what he will become, yet a butterfly knows what he once was.