The Novel Application of Coenzyme Q10 and Nitric Oxide as a Treatment for Simulated High Altitude Pulmonary Edema in Caenorhabditis Elegans as Expressed Through Hypoxia

Overview

High altitude pulmonary edema (HAPE) is a moderately prevalent disease that effects both individuals travelling to high altitude and those who preside at high altitude. Currently, the available treatments (nifedipine and dexamethasone) are both expensive and difficult to access. This studied aimed to provide a novel pharmacological treatment for HAPE as experienced through hypoxia that is both easier to access and less expensive. It was determined that the combination of Coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10) and nitric oxide are a plausible treatment due to being over the counter and drastically more affordable than the current treatments. This experiment was designed using the model organism Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) due to their response to hypoxic conditions and oxygen transport system. In order to induce HAPE, a novel altitude simulator was created by assembling a vacuum system that lowered the air pressure to 65.8 kPa (the air pressure at 4,00m). The hypothesis that if C. elegans were exposed to HAPE conditions and then provided with novel treatment using CoQ10 and nitric oxide, it would diminish the effect that the hypoxic conditions had by: increasing activity level and producing no change in behavior compared to a control, was supported. It was found that there was convincing evidence to reject the null hypothesis with a p value of 1.33 x 10 -7. Therefore suggesting that the combination of CoQ10 with inhaled nitric oxide proves to be a plausible treatment for HAPE, but must first go through more testing. Metagenomic Analysis of Thawing Permafrost Soils in Alaska Catherine Chen West Valley High School Fairbanks, Alaska The Arctic region is the most sensitive region on earth to the effects of climate change. Temperature changes in the Arctic region are increasing at the speed as twice as the global average rate, leading to drastic changes in the landscape including melting of permafrost, changes in precipitation patterns, and changes in vegetation and microbial communities. As the permafrost melts, microorganisms become more active and begin to decompose huge carbon reserves. The proportion of carbon in the permafrost soils accounts for about 5-10% of the entire carbon on earth. Due to the melting of the permafrost as a result of rising global temperatures, this carbon storage is easily decomposed. High-throughput sequencing analysis helps to reveal the diversity and composition of microorganisms in various soil ecosystems, and provides a valuable biomarker for climate change. This project shows that many microbial communities begin to change during the transition from frozen to thawed permafrost soils. The microbial communities that live in these permafrost soils have some common members, including Actinomyces, which account for a significant proportion of microbes in permafrost soils, but Eukaryotic and viral populations differ in their degree of representation. These results will help us understand climate change in the microbial ecosystem of permafrost soils in response to global climate change.

Competition history

• JSHS 2020 Category not listed

Resources

• National JSHS abstract book ↗

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