Dr. Kelly Bidle

Dr. Kelly Bidle, associate professor of biology at Rider University, has received a three-year, $298,850 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Genes and Genomes program to support her research examining how microorganisms adapt to and survive in extreme environments.

With her team of undergraduate students, Dr. Bidle is currently investigating Haloferax volcanii, a halophile, or “salt-loving,” type of microbe found in such hyper-saline environments as the Dead Sea in Israel and in man-made solar salterns such as those found in San Diego County, CA. The presence of highly colorful, protective pigments in the membranes of these halophiles gives hyper-saline environments dramatic pink, orange, and red coloration.

“We have recently discovered a regulatory mechanism used by this halophile to control gene expression in response to changes in salt concentration in its natural environment,” Dr. Bidle said. “Salinity in a hyper-saline environment will continually change in response to rainfall or increased temperatures. As a consequence, the microbes that live in this unique environment have to rapidly adapt on the cellular level to changes in salinity or risk death by plasmolysis.”

Dr. Bidle has studied extremophiles, or microbes living in extreme environments of temperature, pressure, or salinity, for the last 15 years, and it is clearly her passion.

“As humans, we tend to be quite restricted in terms of what we think of as a normal environment,” she said. “However, while oxygenation, ambient temperature and atmospheric pressure clearly dictate where a human can or cannot colonize, virtually every niche of our planet is inhabited by microbes, many of which are essential for driving key biogeochemical processes. The thing about microbes is they have survived on earth for billions of years, in large part because they can adapt to ‘extreme’ environments.”

Dr. Bidle says the most important feature of the NSF Research at the Undergraduate Institutions program is that it fosters undergraduate research. She currently has eight students working in her lab. Six are directly involved in her current research project.

“I think undergraduate science research is critical,” Dr. Bidle added. “Today, a student cannot be competitive for graduate school without previous undergraduate research experience. It is gratifying to see students I have mentored in my lab at Rider go on to master’s and Ph.D. programs and medical schools.”

Including Dr. Bidle’s most recent grant, Rider’s biology faculty currently enjoys more than $1.4 million dollars in funding, primarily from federal agencies such as NSF and NIH (National Institutes of Health).

A member of Rider’s biology faculty since 2001, Dr. Bidle has received five NSF grants since 1996 to support her research. She earned her Ph.D. in molecular and cellular biology from the University of Maryland in 1996, and did her postdoctoral work at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, CA.

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