Zhenyu Tian

They are getting this important clue that the mortality risk of coca salmon is related to traffic.

For example, things from the concrete, things from the antifreeze, like tire particle leachate, and compare the chemistry of those things versus the water that kills coho salmon. Based on that comparison, we see that, okay, tire particle leachate is very similar to that.

You can think of this as cutting a loaf of bread, right? Like you cut them into thin slices. You have something abnormal in the bread, but you don't know where it is. So by cutting into slices, you can test each slice individually so that you can narrow down the scope from like hundreds to tens to one. That's the logic.

You are trying different possibilities, trying different assumptions, and the assumption for additive just didn't work.

That's Zhenyu Tian, whom you might call one of the lead detectives on this case. He was a postdoc research scientist at the Center for Urban Waters at the University of Washington-Tacoma

We are not allowed to work a long time in the lab. So I was like running a little bit more and taking a shower. And that's kind of like where, yeah, got that.

Yeah. I probably should start that morning run again, but I don't have time for now.

Typically for transformation, you will have oxygen and hydrogen changed, but the carbon structure will be most likely stay and also the nitrogen may be not changed.

Those things can be bad, but they are generally in a, you know, the mode of action is quite chronic, right? Like a long-term kind of attack. But this thing is like killing a big fish in hours. So that is why it's kind of like getting more attention and like changing the way people think.

If this trend continues, they might be extinct in a few decades. So that's the problem we want to solve.

So I think the first big step is our collaborators, NOAA and the Washington State University.