Graduate Student - Ph.D.

Organismic and Evolutionary Biology

Harvard University (Cambridge, MA)

Peter R Girguis

I aim to understand the effects of heat stress on hydrothermal vent Paralvinellid worms, both physiologically and biochemically.

My research couples the fields of physiology and biochemical adaptation to understand thermotolerance at hydrothermal vents. I am interested in identifying the thermal boundaries of metazoan life and identifying both the limitations an organism faces under heat stress and the mechanisms by which the organism can acclimate or adapt to its environment. To this end, I study the marine polychaete Paralvinella sulfincola, a vent endemic with the largest experimentally verified thermal range known in the animal kingdom (5 - >50°C) as compared to its closely related congener, Paralvinella palmiformis, whose range is thermotolerance is limited to <40°C.
Animals are collected live from vents, placed into shipboard high-pressure respirometry systems, and subjected to a wide range of thermal and temporal conditions. Oxygen consumption is measured over time to determine physiological responses to thermal stress. Subsequent biochemical investigations of the organisms have included building an Expressed Sequence Tag (EST) library with the DoE-JGI and proteomics using a MS/MS. Further investigations of gene expression will be conducted using RT-qPCR.

2003-2005 Research Assistant - Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute