Ryan Bavis, an assistant professor of biology at Bates, has received a grant from a division of the National Institutes of Health for respiratory research to be completed during the next three years.

Bavis will use the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute grant, totaling $150,000, to advance understanding of why exposing animals to oxygen-rich environments early in their development adversely affects their future respiratory functioning.

When an animal is exposed to low oxygen levels, it typically breathes faster to compensate. But grown animals that were exposed to high oxygen early in life breathe at about half the normal rate in a low-oxygen setting, Bavis explains. This decreased response has been linked to differences in the development of the carotid body, an organ in the neck that senses oxygen content in the blood.

The same may be true for humans. Studies have shown that premature babies treated with supplemental oxygen exhibit abnormal breathing later in life.

"There's a correlation between high oxygen in the neonatal intensive care unit and impaired breathing down the road," Bavis explains. "The problem is, how do you test that in human research? You wouldn't withhold oxygen just to have a control group."

His research, conducted on rats, could potentially inform methods of treatment for premature babies.

Bavis will use the NIH grant to address three main questions:

How does breathing change over time during exposure to high-oxygen environments?

For changes in the breathing rate, is there an equivalent change in carotid body function?

How is the central nervous system, specifically the brainstem, involved in altered breathing responses following developmental exposure to high oxygen?

In this type of research, immature rats are typically exposed to high oxygen for up to two weeks during early development. "What impresses me most is how relatively brief exposure, of a week or two, to high oxygen in early life can permanently alter the way an animal behaves," Bavis says. "We've studied rats up until the point where they start dying of old age, and their breathing is still altered."

Bavis, of Lewiston, earned a Ph.D. from the University of Montana and did postdoctoral work in respiratory physiology at the University of Wisconsin. He has been a member of the Bates College biology department for five years.