University of Oklahoma assistant professor of biology Gavin Woodruff, Ph.D., has received a Faculty Early Career Development Award, known as a CAREER award, from the National Science Foundation to study how one particular roundworm regulates its cell size.
C. inopinata is a roundworm species that is nearly twice as long in size as its highly studied close relative, C. elegans. Woodruff’s study aims to better understand why C. inopinata have such a drastically different body size and how that information could inform scientists’ understanding of cellular growth.
“This work is important because we know larger roundworm species have larger cells than those of smaller species, and when the processes regulating cell size go awry, diseases such as cancer emerge,” Woodruff said. “This work then has the potential to discover novel genes that control cell size and thus potential novel targets for cancer therapeutics.”
Nematodes are a model species for biological studies for many reasons. They grow quickly, as quickly as four days from egg to adult, and one worm can lay hundreds of eggs, which makes it easy for scientists to understand and measure genetic differences. This has led to more than five decades of existing research from a range of studies that provide the scaffolding for the current study.
“Nematodes are studied by thousands of researchers all over the world. Three Nobel prizes have been connected to this organism, so it’s yielded a lot of success; it’s a model system for genetics,” Woodruff said. “But I take a somewhat different approach in that I’m interested in evolution.”
Often, evolutional biologists study systems that contain morphological diversity – differences in body sizes. The C. elegans and its close relatives traditionally have all had similar body sizes – that is until a new species was discovered approximately 10 years ago.
“There is this new species, C. inopinata, that looks very different and is also the closest known relative of C. elegans. So, there’s this exciting idea that we can take the power of a genetic model system and apply it to questions such as, ‘How do species diverge?’ and ‘Why do different species look different from one another?’” Woodruff said.
Educational outreach is a central component of the project. Woodruff will be supporting four educational outreach programs led by the University of Oklahoma, as well as reconfiguring an existing class to look for new mutations in the C. inopinata species, providing a unique discovery opportunity for students.
Two of the outreach components are Woodruff’s participation in OU’s First Year Research Experience program, which connects freshmen with opportunities to explore research options, while another summer program provides opportunities for Oklahoma high school students to gain hands-on research experience in Woodruff’s lab.
In partnership with OU associate professor of biology J.P. Masly, Ph.D., Woodruff will join Masly’s summer research program for Native American college students. Further, Woodruff is working with the University of Oklahoma STEM Inclusion Council, led by OU graduate students, to support their summer Coding Outreach for Data Education (CODE) workshop, a one-week computational workshop in which graduate students train undergraduate and high school students in programming and statistics.
“We are well into the genomic age in biology and high-throughput DNA sequencing,” Woodruff said. “In a single sequencing run, you can sequence over 400 million fragments of DNA all at once. If you want to be a biologist, if you want to be in medicine, you need to know how to deal with this data, and so that’s why this training is highly beneficial to anyone interested in pursuing a career in biology or medicine.”
The five-year project, “The genetic and developmental basis of body size evolution in nematodes,” is funded by an expected $964,837 grant from the National Science Foundation, Award No. 2238788. The project began March 15, 2023, and is expected to conclude Feb. 29, 2028.
