Kaela Wierenga

Honors Portfolio

Application and Development of Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Major: Zoology

Research in RISEbio about Flavobacterium psychrophilum

As I was signing up for college, I was offered to apply for the RISEbio scholarship and

learning community. The application did explain that I would live in the learning community for

one year and participate in research for three semesters from fall 2020 to fall 2021. The first

semester, fall 2020, was not our stream research, but rather an introduction to research methods

we would be using in the spring and fall semesters of 2021 during our stream research. We got to

choose between cancer and immunity or bacteria and disease. Since I am a zoology major, I

thought it would be beneficial to join the bacteria and disease stream to learn about the pathogen

Flavobacterium psychrophilum which impacts freshwater fish. Specifically, my partner and I

wanted to isolate the endonuclease I within the pathogen.

I feel obligated to say that I do not refer to it as my research, but as our research since I

was collaborating with my partner Emily Schmidtbauer the whole time. We both contributed to

our research and the making of our presentations, but we also experienced our own personal

growth. The spring of 2021 was our first semester of research, and our goal was to insert our

downstream region into this new plasmid. Our first task was to find a good annealing

temperature for region containing the endonuclease to be amplified. This took quite a bit of trial

and error for us since we had an idea of what the temperature should be, but it was not showing.

It took us a few weeks and retries, but we finally found a temperature that was suitable for our
amplification. By this time, the other two groups in our stream were ahead of us and onto new

topics. We did not let this discourage us and put in extra work to get caught up to the others. We

learned topics and new techniques as the other groups were learning them even though we were

not ready for that part in our own research yet. With our perseverance, we accomplished our goal

by the end of the semester just before our presentation.

Our first semester presentation was more work than we were planning. We thought it was

simply outlining all the work we did over the semester, but we also had to conduct research on

the pathogen and our endonuclease I. We were able to find quite a few reliable articles about

Flavobacterium psychrophilum, but it was difficult to find anything about the endonuclease I.

Thankfully, through the help of MavScholar and our graduate TA, we were able to find two

articles about the function of the endonuclease I in the pathogen. We had put several hours into

creating this presentation before we presented it to our graduate TA before our formal

presentation. We were so confident that we did well, and we did, but there still was a lot of

editing that needed to get done. There were certain scientific terms that we incorrectly used so

we had to alter our verbiage to correctly identify and explain our research. We spent several

more hours altering the presentation with his suggestions before we presented our next draft

presentation to our professor before our final presentation. We had felt confident after our last

revisions and only had to do another hour worth of editing to work with his suggestions. Our

final edits were grammatical and making sure we were using the correct terms for our research

and properly explaining the research we conducted. We also made sure that our pictures we used

were cited properly and our graphics we created were scientifically accurate. Then came the big

day, our final presentation. Our anticipation built up knowing we were presenting to all RISEbio

staff and students and other members of the science department. We were set to go second
overall, the first of our stream. We dressed up nice and practiced our speech several times and

pondered what questions would be asked. The presentation went extremely well, and we were

relieved. Our first semester of research was a success, and we were excited to start up again in

the fall.

In the fall of 2021, we continued our research with Flavobacterium psychrophilum and

the endonuclease I with the hopes of inserting upstream region into our final plasmid from the

previous semester and starting to work with our completed plasmid construct in the pathogen.

We were slow starting up remembering all the protocols and research methods, but we got back

into the groove of research quickly. Thankfully, we did not have any issues starting up and did

not have any for quite a while. It seems like the only hiccup we had was when we utilized the

wrong E. coli cells in a transformation. Luckily, this only set us back a week and we were

positive about it saying things were going too well and we were surprised that this was only a

small disturbance to our research. By the end of the semester, we successfully completed our

plasmid construct and started to insert it into Flavobacterium psychrophilum. While the research

went well and was a lot of fun, we still had our big poster presentation to do. We started by

looking at what our previous presentation consisted of and transferred over some information

and references. Next, we had to look at what could be changed to fit the format of the poster

better. After many hours, we had our first draft of our poster done. We knew some work would

still need to be put into it, so we showed it to our peer mentor. She said we had all the right

things but needed to organize it better for the viewers. We had a general poster template we

followed, but we had to change and move our sections around to fit in our graphics and pictures.

Usually, the poster is split into three columns: left explaining the introduction and methods, the

center being results, and the right being conclusions and references. We had to shift our research
section down and add our methods section above our research. This took quite a bit of time and

two extra people to help us alter the template and make the sections clear and organized for our

research and for our viewers. I thought I was a highly organized person, and this came as a shock

to me, but we put more hours into organizing our content and creating a better flow. Later, we

showed our professor, and he gave us more suggestions on our content and organization. After

even more hours of altering our poster, we presented it again to our professor and added another

hour of changes to make our final poster.

The big day arrived. Our posters had been printed and hung up in our presentation room,

we practiced several times, dressed nice, and had a good breakfast. We had members of

RISEbio, and other staff of the science department attend and listen to our poster presentations,

we even had the Dean of the College of Science, Engineering, and Technology (CSET) attend

our presentation. While we had only presented to fifteen people for two hours, we were

exhausted. Two semesters worth of research placed into a single poster and presented for other

scientists was a huge achievement.

I am grateful for everything RISEbio gave me and highly recommend it to any incoming

students who are interested in biology or research of any kind. Not only did I learn about

working in a lab setting, but I also learned how to work with others even when we are

conducting similar yet different research, how to assess problems and apply solutions, conduct

scientific research, and present research findings.

In the future, I hope to utilize my research skills when it comes to giving presentations

about animals. I want to rely on good and professional research to give accurate information to

guests and other keepers. It is also useful that I know diverse ways to manage problems and how
I could look for and use multiple concepts to help apply a solution. Even though research may

not be in my future, the skills involved will always help me in any career I will do.
 References

Kaela Wierenga and Emily Schmidtbauer’s First Semester of Research Presentation:

file:///C:/Users/aleak/OneDrive/Documents/College/First%20Year%20(2020-

2021)/Spring%202021%20Semester/RISEbio/Assignments/Presentations/Bacteria%20and%20D

isease%20-%20Emily%20and%20Kaela.pdf

Kaela Wierenga and Emily Schmidtbauer’s Final Poster Presentation:

file:///C:/Users/aleak/OneDrive/Documents/College/Second%20Year%20(2021-

2022)/Fall%202021%20Semester/RISEbio/Assignments/Risebio%20Poster_Emily%20and%20

Kaela.pdf