While working for an environmental nonprofit organization in India, Namrata Sengupta investigated how poor waste management and sanitation practices can impact the environment and public health. Her work sparked an interest in environmental toxicology and led her to Clemson University in 2011 as a doctoral student in the field.
While working for an environmental nonprofit organization in India, Namrata Sengupta investigated how poor waste management and sanitation practices can impact the environment and public health. Her work sparked an interest in environmental toxicology and led her to Clemson University in 2011 as a doctoral student in the field.
Sengupta spent her time in graduate school using Daphnia magna, or water fleas, as model organisms for studying environmental health. She started investigating how these organisms respond to different environmental toxicants. The culmination of her research indicates that certain toxicants can disrupt the maturation of Daphnia by altering the level of lipids (fats, waxes and their relatives) present in the species. Published in May 2017 in PLOS ONE, these findings take a step toward understanding how a specific pathway – one of sphingomyelin metabolism – affects development.
Sphingomyelin, the key lipid of the study, was first noticed by Sengupta and colleagues because it isn’t present in embryonic or in adult Daphnia, but rather in newborns, indicating it plays a significant role in development and progression to reproductive maturity.
“That’s actually one of the coolest findings, not even toxicology-related, but a basic biochemical finding,” said William Baldwin, Sengupta’s adviser and co-author of the study. “Sphingomyelin is very important in the maturation of this species.”
Read more at Clemson University
Image: Namrata Sengupta, doctoral graduate of environmental toxicology, works in the lab. (Credit: Dhaval Parmar)
