Adam Psenicnik

Adam Psenicnik, a Western Connecticut State University undergraduate student double-majoring in Biology and Applied and Computational Math, recently accomplished a feat generally seen as one for doctoral degree candidates or degreed professionals — he was a first author on an article published in the journal, Toxins. The article, “Optimizing Scorpion Toxin Processing through Artificial Intelligence” was published in October 2024.

Co-authors include Andres A. Ojanguren-Affilastro from División Aracnología, Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Matthew R. Graham from the Department of Biology, Eastern Connecticut State University, Willimantic; Mohamed K. Hassan from the Zoology Department, Faculty of Science, Port Said University, Port Said, Egypt; Mohamed A. Abdel-Rahman from the Zoology Department, Faculty of Science, Suez Canal University, Ismailia, Egypt; Prashant P. Sharma from the Department of Integrative Biology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin; and Carlos E. Santibáñez-López, Psenicnik’s WestConn Biology adviser.

Scorpion

According to the paper’s abstract, “Scorpion toxins are relatively short cyclic peptides (<150 amino acids) that can disrupt the opening/closing mechanisms in cell ion channels. These peptides are widely studied for several reasons including their use in drug discovery. Although improvements in RNAseq have greatly expedited the discovery of new scorpion toxins, their annotation remains challenging, mainly due to their small size. Here, we present a new pipeline to annotate toxins from scorpion transcriptomes using a neural network approach. This pipeline implements basic neural networks to sort amino acid sequences to find those that are likely toxins and thereafter predict the type of toxin represented by the sequence. We anticipate that this pipeline will accelerate the classification of scorpion toxins in forthcoming scorpion genome sequencing projects and potentially serve a useful role in identifying targets for drug development.”

It’s quite a jump from Psenicnik’s high school diploma in Manufacturing Technologies from Abbott Technical High School, to his current status as a published journal article author, but it’s what can happen when you pursue what interests you and are open to opportunities. After graduating from high school, Psenicnik, of New Milford, enrolled at Naugatuck Valley Community College and received an associate degree in Computer Science. His plan was to transfer to WestConn to turn it into a bachelor’s degree.

Once on campus, Psenicnik tried some Biology classes and was intrigued. He told his adviser in the Computer Science program that he wanted to add Biology as a dual major, and he was quickly connected with Professor of Biology Dr. Carlos Santibáñez-López. Among other things, Santibáñez-López conducts research into scorpions, including their venom and toxins, and Psenicnik wanted to get involved.

Adam Psenicnik

Self-taught in Artificial Intelligence, Psenicnik set out to use AI technology to streamline the inquiry process. “The goal, mostly, is to identify the toxins and their specific mechanism of action,” Psenicnik explained. “This is useful for drug development and cancer research, so identifying these things is very helpful.” Without getting too technical, Psenicnik said that extracting proteins sequences from scorpion venom can yield a massive amount of data — between 20,000 and 40,000 sequences — and having to go through and pick out the toxins is a laborious process. Using his interest and abilities in AI, he set out to isolate the toxins in different categories, such as calcium-channel or potassium-channel toxins.

If you’re wondering if Psenicnik worked with live scorpions to obtain these scorpion toxin sequences, the answer is no. The venom sequences were sourced from an online database. It’s also not the first time that AI has been used to isolate toxins. A neural network called Toxify was published that identifies toxins from many species, but to his knowledge, Psenicnik’s AI model is the first to focus specifically on scorpions and to classify toxins based on their targets.

“This is pretty cutting edge research,” Psenicnik said. “And I wouldn’t have been able to do this without Dr. Santibáñez-López, that’s for sure.”

It should come as no surprise that as soon as WestConn announced a mathematics degree with a specialty in AI, Psenicnik traded his Computer Science major for Applied and Computational Mathematics, which houses the AI specialty. “Now I want to work on a research project on differential equations with my math adviser, Dr. Stavros Christofi,” Psenicnik said.

Psenicnik revealed he initially came to WestConn “because it’s close to home,” but soon realized there are opportunities he never could have imagined. “I really like the research aspect here,” he said. “I like the fact that the faculty in the sciences and math encourage their students to do hands-on research. If you have a project you want to explore, you’ll probably find a faculty member to help you do it.” He also plans to attend the international Joint Mathematics Meeting, one of the largest mathematical meetings worldwide, in January 2025 to present new research on identifying scorpion toxins.

Psenicnik said he also enjoys the opportunity to share his research with his peers and the rest of the campus community at Western Research Day each spring. “I’ve presented posters at Research Day the past two years, and I’m looking forward to doing it again,” Psenicnik said. “And hopefully when I graduate, I’ll be doing research for my career.”

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