fairfolio
Saved Projects

Positive Relationships Between Temperature Change and Vibrio parahaemolyticus Presence in Monterey, CA

CSEF · 2023 Earth & Environmental Sciences Honorable_mention Award

Goforth Chloe, Xie Jiatong · 12

Overview

The bacteria Vibrio parahaemolyticus can potentially be toxic and cause vibriosis infection in humans. Past work in Asia has shown that the prevalence of vibriosis related to shellfish consumption has increased as coastal temperatures increased. Here, we focus on detecting V. parahaemolyticus in mussels in colder upwelling environments in Monterey Bay, CA. We hypothesize that as temperatures increase, so would the prevalence of the bacteria. To test this, we collected mussels from the Monterey Wharf in the winter, spring, and fall (2021-2022) with ocean temperatures ranging from 8.1ºC to 23.1ºC. Mussels were then processed and the gills were dissected, macerated, plated on a vibrio-specific TCBS agar, then allowed to incubate for 5-6 days at 37ºC to test for the presence of V. parahaemolyticus. Early results indicate that prevalence of this bacteria in mussel gill is coupled to environmental temperature. When plated after collection from lower temperatures, colonies were less prevalent and were slower to appear. Alternatively, after higher temperatures the colonies were more prevalent and were faster to appear. We have begun using PCR and electrophoresis to examine whether the colonies are the toxic strain of V. parahaemolyticus using the tdh and trh virulence genes. This result, in an marine environment that is traditionally colder with a lower rate of V. parahaemolyticus, may have application to predicting potential public health threats in a warming ocean.

Source coverage

This record comes from a published award list, not a complete project archive. Its abstract comes from CSEF's public project showcase as archived by the Internet Archive before judging (https://web.archive.org/web/20230401224130/https://ca-csef.zfairs.com/showcase/ShowcaseInfo?f=838e60b7-ea75-46e8-865c-fde4864244b3); the version presented may differ.

Awards (1)

  • Category Award: HM

Competition history

  • CSEF 2023 Earth & Environmental Sciences · Entry S0934

Resources

Related projects

Closest projects by meaning, across every fair and year in the corpus.

Browse more like this

Source: California Science & Engineering Fair public projects

Save projects to your library

Sign in with Google to keep track of projects you find interesting, organized into folders. An account also raises your daily allowance for “Has this been done?”, and lets you create a key for the MCP server with a much higher limit than anonymous use. Browsing stays public.

Continue with Google