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Lucia Liet was working as an ocean rescue lifeguard on the Jersey Shore when she decided that she wanted to study ecology. Now, she has moved up the East Coast to become a marine protector of a different sort: a researcher at the forefront of using eDNA to try and save the Atlantic cod.

After Liet graduated from high school in her native New Jersey, she attended community college for a few years before applying to the 91����. She was attracted to the ample natural spaces that were perfect for a budding ecologist to study and explore, as well as the interdisciplinary nature of the Ecology and Environmental Sciences Program.

“It is very easy to collaborate with other departments,” Liet says. “I’m able to take molecular biology and environmental courses, and philosophy and anthropology courses. I feel like you get those interdepartmental connections.”  

Liet was first introduced to the concept of eDNA, where DNA in the environment is used to study the organisms living there, through a Research Learning Experience (RLE) course. The cutting-edge scientific technique immediately piqued her interest. 

“It’s a field in its infancy. It’s really only been around for 10 years, and for more specific fields of study like marine biology, it’s only been used for like five years. It’s a frontier field in the sciences right now,” Liet says.

At the end of the course, she asked her professor Peter Avis if he had research opportunities to study eDNA. Avis said he didn’t, but his wife Erin Grey, assistant professor of aquatic genetics and manager of the Grey Aquatics Lab, did.

Liet formally met Grey at a university job fair, and she hired her to work in the lab in October 2021. Grey says that Liet’s strong background in both ecology and molecular biology — that interdisciplinary blend that brought Liet to 91���� in the first place — made her a great fit for the eDNA project.

“You need to be able to understand both,” Grey says. “She had that unique combination.”

Liet is working on a project that uses eDNA to determine cod spawning locations in the Gulf of Maine. Atlantic cod have been functionally extinct since the late 19th century due to overfishing and ocean warming. The loss of cod was devastating economically and ecologically for the Gulf of Maine, and the populations haven’t been able to rebound like some other over harvested species in the region once regulations were put in place. Marine scientists aren’t sure why, but one theory is that something is going wrong with their spawning. The exact locations and times of cod spawning are not well known in the Gulf of Maine, but may be easier to find with the help of eDNA. 

“We don’t really know where they spawn,” Grey says. “We know a couple of areas, but it’s a big gulf and they spawn near the bottom. Since it can be easier to collect eDNA from water samples it might be easier for us to detect it.”

Liet takes water samples from spawning cod in a controlled lab environment and uses a process called qPCR, or quantitative polymerase chain reaction, to pick out specific genes only found in cod. Through the process, primers and probes act like “selective magnets” for the tiny gene sequence, which are multiplied until they are plentiful enough to be detected.

Depending on how long the DNA takes to amplify, Liet can figure out whether the sequence of DNA she is looking at is “background noise” or significant enough to be related to spawning. Cod release great quantities of DNA into the water when they’re spawning, after all.

“She’s really sort of taken ownership of the project,” Grey says. “The PCR assay in the beginning had a few kinks we had to work out and she really hunkered down and troubleshooted all that stuff.”

Grey says that Liet’s work with eDNA is promising to detect cod in an area in general, but she also hopes to be able to involve eRNA into the project at some point. RNA are smaller subsets of DNA with specific instructions for, as Grey says, “doing something in the moment.” A cod makes RNAs in eye cells for making eye proteins, for example, or scale cell RNAs for making scale proteins. 

In the same vein, the cod material collected in water samples where the fish are releasing their eggs and sperm will exhibit specific RNA related to spawning.

“If we can find RNAs that are related to spawning, that would be game changing for the field,” Grey says.

Eventually, researchers aim to be able to give fishermen the ability to collect samples on and send them to a lab to conduct eDNA assays to find cod in the field. Liet even had the opportunity to go out with the Gulf of Maine Research Institute to see if they could catch any spawning cod in order to collect field samples for testing. They didn’t catch any spawning cod that day — Liet said that future researchers will have to see if what she finds in the lab can apply to the field — but she had a great day fishing regardless.

Liet hopes to continue using her eDNA skills to solve complex environmental and ecological problems. Her eventual goal is to use what she has learned in the Grey Aquatics Lab about eDNA to study fungi in soils, specifically how fungal communities have shifted in response to applications of synthetic fertilizer and the natural recovery that has occurred since fertilizer application has ceased. She is conducting an internship as an aquatic and wetland ecosystem technician for a Ph.D. student studying groundwater seepage, which she says has “definitely reinforced” her interest in soil.

“I’ve always been passionate about growing things and gardening and I want to have a farm some day. I took soil science [with Ivan Fernandez] last semester and I really fell in love.”

But first, she says, “We’ve got to save the cod.”

Contact: Sam Schipani, samantha.schipani@maine.edu