- Graduate School GLOMAR
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- Research Placements
- Sofía Afoncheva
Sofía Afoncheva
Report of GLOMAR PhD student Sofía Afoncheva about her research placement in La Torre de la Sal, Spain, at the Institute of Aquaculture from 1 March to 30 June 2022
I was very happy to finally be able to travel and have a research stay in the Institute of Aquaculture Torre de la Sal (CSIC-IATS) in Spain after two years of multiple delays due to pandemic. I have been reading a lot on the topic of hunting for the genes responsible for polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) biosynthesis in different aquatic animals and was excited to do the same with the species I am working with in my PhD project - copepod Apocyclops panamensis.
Dr. Oscar Montroig, who was supervising my work in the IATS and his research group are working on molecular mechanisms of PUFA synthesis in a wide variety of marine invertebrates. During the first weeks I was learning all the basic techniques for molecular biology research, designing primers, playing around with different PCRs, race PCR troubleshooting, experimenting with polymerases, analysing sequencing results.
From Germany I brought with me live copepods that I was culturing in the wet lab for the subsequent sampling. I was spending the entire days in the molecular lab, which was challenging and exciting at the same time, especially when we found out that one of the DNA fragments, we sent for sequencing, indeed belongs to desaturases, that is responsible for PUFA synthesis in our copepod species.
After many weeks of trials, designing new primers, running PCRs, sequencing and with the help of a colleague scientist from Japan, Naoki Kabeya, we found that A. panamensis probably has the full machinery for synthesis of PUFA. Once we had the potential capability to synthesise PUFA confirmed, it was time for me to learn how to perform functional characterization of found genes in order to identify whether these genes are active.
The second part of my research stay was devoted to functional characterization of the PUFA genes, that included running essays with yeasts that we transformed beforehand to incorporate the gene of interest from the copepods into the yeast genome. Each essay takes around two weeks from the transformation through substrates addition until yeasts harvesting and fatty acids extraction. So my last weeks at the IATS were very intense but satisfying as we could immediately see the results of the fatty acid analysis, which confirmed that our species has potential ability to produce PUFA.
Along with the work in the lab I had an opportunity to attend the seminars of visiting and local scientists, who are working in similar fields: Dr. Naoki Kabeya, Dr. Luis Filipe Castro and Alberto Ribes-Navarro. At the end, I had a very fruitful time at IATS, having learned a variety of molecular and biochemical methods and obtained valuable results for my research project that helped to move my PhD project further along towards the completion. I enjoyed my stay in Spain a lot also because of the wonderful climate and nature. The institute is located just in front of the Mediterranean Sea and the natural park Cabanes-Torreblanca next to it.
Cycling everyday to work and back along the coastline and beach in warm sunny weather made my working days feel like holidays. On the weekends I could explore Valencia, that has a lot to offer to the visitors.
During my research stay I met lots of colleagues in IATS who had a very valuable input in my work: guiding me through the molecular methods, helping to establish copepods culture at the place, teaching preliminary results interpretation.
I am very thankful to Dr. Oscar Monroig, Dr. Juan Carlos Navarro, Alberto Ribes-Navarro who helped me during my research stay. I am also very grateful to GLOMAR who funded this research stay.
