Plants of Future Past
Bryant graduate examines past climates to help future Mars mission
A leaf falls from its tree millions of years ago, digested by the soil beneath and forgotten. This past year, in a lab at Bryant University, Jillian Sylvia rediscovers the remnants of the plant, or ‘biomarkers,’ that provide scientists important insights on past climate change for NASA’s upcoming Mars mission in 2031.
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Lipids are a good source of knowledge
about past climates because scientists can examine these biomarkers for clues about the kinds of plants they once supported. After conducting a process called total lipid extraction, for example, one can see whether a region was grassland, tropical forest, or tundra, giving researchers like Sylvia and her advisor, Robert Patalano, an archaeologist and lecturer at Bryant, the chance to peer back in time.
Through a $7,300 Rhode Island NASA Space Consortium grant, Sylvia was responsible for practicing and keeping track of her procedures while conducing total lipid extractions of soil samples, collected from a site in Idaho.
Ultimately, the goal of Sylvia’s research for NASA
was to help grow in some small way our scientific knowledge of Earth, its past and present environments so that researchers and engineers can successfully retrieve soil samples from Mars in the 2030s and return them to our planet.
Sylvia’s own research journey began in 2021
as a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellow (SURF) for RI NSF EPSCoR , working with Steven Weicksel, assistant professor of biological and biomedical sciences at Bryant. Both were new to the university, starting research on how microplastics impact Atlantic silverside, an important fish species native to Narragansett Bay.
Sylvia found the experience starkly different to her NASA work, but critical to her understanding of lab methods.
What was most rewarding to Sylvia
during her time as an undergraduate researcher, however, was the chance to develop as a leader in the lab for her fellow students.
Although she’s undecided whether graduate school is the next step, Sylvia hopes to pursue interests in business and art that complement her scientific training, as well as find ways to make science more accessible.
More Information
Bartlett, E. (2023). Mars in mind: Bryant students earn funding from NASA RI Space Grant Consortium. BryantNews
Joniec, A., Leszczynski, J., Ndoye, S., Sylvia, J., & Weicksel, S. E. (2023). Getting an A with the 3Cs: Chromosome Conformation Capture for Undergraduates (Video)| JoVE. JoVE (Journal of Visualized Experiments), (195), e65213.
