Appalachian Lab
Monthly Newsletter

Last month, we announced the Appalachian Lab Investors Network (TALIN).  At the inaugural October meeting, three of our faculty members pitched research projects and all three of the proposals were funded by the investor network.  In the next three newsletters, we plan to tell you more about each of the projects that were funded.  

Zach Zbinden’s project investigates how to use nature’s own tools to expedite climate adaptation.  Here’s a summary of Zach’s proposed work:

Global temperatures are steadily rising, posing a significant threat to biodiversity and ecosystems.
Genetic modification holds the potential to help species adapt to these changes by enhancing their
resilience—a strategy already underway for organisms like the American Chestnut and Black-footed
Ferret. However, genetic modification is often seen as extreme or unnatural, creating barriers to
funding, regulatory support, and public acceptance.

This project seeks to offer a balanced, nature-driven alternative by focusing on Brook Trout, an iconic
species native to the Appalachian region. Rather than introducing foreign genes or designing new traits, our work seeks to amplify naturally evolved adaptations already present within specific Brook Trout
populations. Brook Trout span a North-South gradient, exposing them to a range of climate pressures,
and they are distributed across thousands of discrete populations, making them an ideal “natural
laboratory” for studying climate adaptation.

Through landscape genomics, this research will identify the adaptive genes in Brook Trout populations
facing extreme environmental conditions. The aim is to build a collaborative network to propagate these
adaptations across the Brook Trout range using targeted genetic intervention and fish hatcheries. By
using nature’s own tools, this approach enhances resilience without creating anything artificial—giving
species a chance to survive by amplifying what they already possess and setting the stage for broader
applications in conservation.