Tick experiment earns honor for Jackson science student

At 8-and-a-half years old, Grant Roseman was bitten by a tick causing him to develop an allergy affecting his ability to eat the meat of mammals.

The experience led the Jackson resident, now 15, to conduct an experiment to see how different ticks, including the tick which caused his allergy, react or are attracted to carbon dioxide.

His findings were the subject of his project for the 63rd annual Southeast Missouri Regional Science Fair on Tuesday at the Show Me Center. The project earned him the fair's top overall honor enabling him to travel to Phoenix in May to compete at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair.

His allergy, the Alpha-Gal mammalian meat allergy, was caused by Amblyomma Americanum, the Lone Star tick, he said. If the tick bites a mammal and then bites a human, the mammalian blood can eventually reach the human's bloodstream, he said. As a result, he said the next time the person comes into contact with mammalian meat an allergic response such as hives or anaphylaxis can occur.

"I wanted to prove that the Lone Star Tick was the most aggressive feeder or it was the most attracted to carbon dioxide," Roseman said of his project.

Grant Roseman of Jackson, 15, speaks to Dr. Matt Shoemaker of Cape Girardeau, a science fair judge, while Roseman's project is evaluated during the 63rd annual Southeast Missouri Regional Science Fair on Tuesday at the Show Me Center in Cape Girardeau.Jacob Wiegand

Humans exhale carbon dioxide when they breathe so Roseman used pieces of dry ice, which is frozen carbon dioxide, to simulate the amount of carbon dioxide given off by a human in a respective timeframe for his trial.

He said 90 percent of the time the Lone Star tick went toward the dry ice in a three minute timeframe during 10 trials of his experiment.

Roseman said the five other ticks included in his experiment: the Gulf Coast tick, Rocky Mountain wood tick, American dog tick, blacklegged tick and brown dog tick, were not nearly as responsive to the carbon dioxide given off by the dry ice.

Although it was the Lone Star tick causing Roseman's allergy, he said he chose to include the other ticks for his project because they are the most common ticks in America.

"It's very applicable to what's going on in medicine and health cause he did the project regarding Alpha-Gal," said Dr. Chelsea Grigery, director of the science fair and a pediatrician at Southeast Health. "It's research that's not published. If you try to look up Grant's project, you're not going to find any information on what he did. And that's what really set him apart from the other students."

Grigery said 615 students from 44 Southeast Missouri schools took part in Tuesday's fair.

Roseman's mother and homeschool teacher, Andrea, estimated her son invested more than 100 hours working on the project.

"He's learned a lot about how important detail is," Andrea said about her son's experience. "I've watched him already apply that to other areas."

When he isn't finding out more about ticks, Roseman takes part in scouting activities, where he obtained the rank of Eagle Scout in September, and plays guitar, including Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here," his favorite song to play on the instrument.

As the science fair drew to a close and students chatted in their seats while waiting for the awards, Grant sat patiently waiting for the fair results.

Two projects, including Grant's overall win and the runner-up, from the Southeast Missouri fair are given the chance to travel to the international competition in Phoenix.

"This is the Olympics of science," Grigery said of the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair.

The annual competition gives roughly 1,800 high school students from more than 75 countries, regions and territories a chance to show their work and compete for on average four million dollars in prizes, according to student.societyforscience.org.

"They will actually walk up to them and if they have kind of cutting-edge technology, scout them to come work for them, or give them scholarship money in anticipation for them working in Silicon Valley if it's something technology," Grigery said.

Grigery will attend the event with Grant and the other students from the Southeast Missouri Regional Science Fair as their coach.

"I spend a lot of time working with these students to kind of coach them on their presentation and the do's and don'ts of how to interview with some of these scientists there," she said.

Although this was Grant's first year participating the science fair, he said he plans to one day go into an engineering field.

"I've always liked to solve problems," he said.