Samantha's Project Page

Who:  I’m Samantha Nestel and I am proud to be from Ogden Utah.  Since a young age, I’ve tried to remain well-rounded and get involved in a lot of activities. I am passionate about many hobbies but I tend to spend most of my time performing on stage in musical theatre productions, learning American Sign Language, baking, and serving the community through various volunteer opportunities.

My scientific/engineering interests:  My schooling has always been my number one priority which is where my love for exploring science and its many possibilities blossomed.   

Academic goals:  I am a third generation University of Utah Student and am so excited to be a part of the College of Science majoring in Biology and minoring in Mathematics. I am active in the Honors College and plan to be a Bennion Center Scholar. I hope that I can continue in biological research throughout my undergraduate years.

Career goals:  After graduating with an Honor’s BS degree, I hope to earn an MD, with a focus on women’s health issues. I really enjoy government studies and politics. I hope to run for political office someday and pass legislation making access to health care easier and more affordable.

The effect of environment on development is critical to human health, and animal and plant ecological strategies. However, the molecular mechanisms that regulate developmental (phenotypic) plasticity remain poorly understood. When exposed to different environments, the nematode Pristionchus pacificus expresses one of two possible mouth forms; either the ‘Stenostomatous’ morph with a narrow buccal cavity and one tooth-like denticle, or the ‘Eurystomatous’ morph that has a wide buccal cavity and two teeth-like denticles. In my ACCESS project, I have been assessing whether morph choice, an experimentally tractable example of developmental plasticity, is mediated by nutrition. Specifically, I am performing two experiments to test the putative connection between nutritional status and phenotype: 1) grow and collect P. pacificus on different environments and measure potential changes in metabolism, and 2) conduct dietary restriction experiments with different Pristionchus species to assess the generality and conservation of the diet:phenotype connection. Here, I initiated a pilot experiment with a titration of worm-pellet sizes and submitted samples to the University of Utah Metabolomics Core Facility for GC-MS and LC-MS metabolomics, to assess whether this technique is applicable to our samples and how much material is required. In the second project, I phenotyped four different species grown on high- or low-bacterial food conditions.  Results from the first experiment demonstrated that the LC/GC-MS metabolomics does work on our worms, and that 500-microliter pellets provide optimal quantification.  Results from the second experiment show that all four species exhibited significant differences in mouth form under dietary restrictive conditions. Collectively, these results suggest that 1) conducting metabolomics on our worms in different conditions is viable to address the connection between diet, gene regulation and development, and 2) that the effect of diet on morph choice is a deeply-rooted phenomenon.