Amy Schexnayder
Author: Amy Schexnayder | Majors: Biology and Psychology
My name is Amy Schexnayder and I am an Honors College Fellow studying biology and psychology in the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences. I spent this semester researching the prevalence of poxviruses and hantaviruses in rodents in Northwest Arkansas. I am a senior and will be conducting one more semester of research before presenting this project as my honors thesis. As an aspiring doctor, I found this topic stretched my field of knowledge and furthered my understanding of the research process. I have done this research under my mentor, Dr. Kristian Forbes in the biological sciences department and with the generous help of PhD student Nathaniel Mull.
A few months ago, I was at work where I am a nursing assistant at Washington Regional Medical Center. Down the hallway I heard the alarm on the continuous vitals monitor blare over and over again. The shrill beeps were indicative of a patient’s alarmingly low blood oxygen. levels. Her chest heaved up and down, taking rapid, shallow breaths. As the nurse hurriedly threw on her yellow gown, two layers of disposable gloves, a surgical mask, an N95 mask, and eye gear, she shouted through the glass window, “Deep breaths Grace*, deep breaths!” Grace’s eyes darted around the room in terror, as she tried to focus on taking deep breaths from the breathing machine that was keeping her oxygen levels from plummeting downward. The nurse arrived, only to try to comfort Grace and temporarily recover her oxygen saturation. Unfortunately, since Grace could not keep her oxygen levels up, she was emergently intubated later that day.
Over the last year I have worked at Washington Regional as a nursing assistant and witnessed numerous patients like Grace fight COVID-19. My experiences working in the hospital motivated me to switch research labs and study similar zoonotic viruses like Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. In the case of Sars-CoV-2, the virus was likely transmitted from bats to an unknown intermediate host, and then to humans. In my research, I am studying rodents, which are well known reservoirs of zoonotic viruses. I am looking for two specific families of viruses: Hantaviridae and Poxviridae. Hantaviridae is the family that contains hantaviruses, a well-known virus that can cause dangerous human diseases like Hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome or Hantavirus cardiopulmonary syndrome. Poxviridae is the family of poxviruses, which contains viruses like smallpox, cowpox, and monkeypox, which are also known to cause serious human disease.
The goal of my research is to identify the occurrence of poxviruses and hantaviruses among rodents in Northwest Arkansas (NWA). This research will yield greater insight into the prevalence, habitats, and disease ecology of both hantaviruses and poxviruses. Furthermore, this research will better equip the public to prevent the spread of detrimental zoonotic viruses and may aid in preventing people like Grace from fighting such a scary disease. After witnessing first-hand the detrimental effects of COVID-19, I am thrilled to be working on a project to identify risk of zoonoses in NWA.
I started this project last spring by learning to dissect rodents and extract various organs to later use as tissue samples. The rodents were captured using live traps at several different sites in Washington and Benton counties. They were euthanized on site and brought back to the lab to be dissected. I was excited to dissect the rodents because it was the first time that I have had the chance to dissect something in college. Many of my science labs have been conducted online due to the pandemic so I was looking forward to finally get my gloves dirty. After dissecting the rodents, Nathaniel took the tissue samples to Finland to identify which samples had antibodies for either poxviruses or hantaviruses. The samples that had for antibodies were then run through PCR and gel electrophoresis to identify which rodents were infected by the virus. I spent many days in the lab preparing the samples for PCR and running gel electrophoresis. It was exhausting to spend hours completing the tedious steps of PCR, but our hard work paid off when we found both hantaviruses and poxviruses in a few of our rodent samples. Currently, the samples are being sequenced to identify the type of hantavirus and poxviruses present. Previous research has not located any hantaviruses in NWA, so this is an exciting finding. Moving forward, I will be working on a publication to summarize our findings and hopefully submitting it to a journal.
Without the aid of this grant, I would have been unable to put so much time and effort into this project. I can now confidently run PCR, gel electrophoresis, and other lab techniques. I am a more confident scientist and am no longer intimidated by the research process. I am so grateful to the Honors College, Dr. Forbes, and Nathaniel Mull for their generous support and guidance throughout this project; it would be unsuccessful without them. As an aspiring physician, I am thrilled to engage in research that is so pertinent to human health and will hopefully aid in preventing people like Grace from such dangerous human diseases.
*The names used is this blog post are pseudonyms.