Zen Faulkes - US grants

A grant has been awarded to the University of Texas-Pan American under the direction of Dr. Anita Baines to acquire a genetic analysis system for biological research and education. The system will provide researchers with the ability to perform DNA sequencing to study individual genetic differences and populations of organisms. The genetic analysis system will be used to study communities of bacteria and fungi, the phylogeny of neurobiology and behavior, regulation of cell death (apoptosis), and genes that affect the response of sea grasses to stresses from heavy metals in the environment. The institution educates primarily an undergraduate population, and nearly 90% are Hispanic. Students will be exposed to the instrument and genetic data in courses on cell biology, biotechnology, and molecular genetics. Graduate and undergraduate students will employ the instrumentation in their research.

This REU Site is situated at the University of Texas-Pan American (UTPA) which is located in the lower Rio Grande Valley in southern Texas. The REU program will support six undergraduates per year. Students in the program conduct year-long biological research under the supervision of their mentors, focusing on the local environment and organisms. The program runs slightly more than a year for each cohort. Students begin their research programs in mid-summer, continue them through the academic year, and complete them at the end of the following summer. During the regular academic year, students in each cohort: (1) take courses in Biological Writing, Biology Seminar, Statistics, Professional Ethics, and GRE preparation together; (2) attend professional development workshops; (3) participate in two on-site symposia (one in Fall and one in Spring), one regional conference, and one national conference, and; (4) attend presentations by visiting mentors and associated social events. Students' families are invited to attend social events with students, mentors, and visiting mentors, to help educate families about opportunities in scientific careers. During their second summer, students live on-campus to facilitate their research. The last months in the program overlap with the first months of the new students in the incoming cohort. This arrangement provides continuity between projects during transition between cohorts, and allows the veteran students to gain mentoring experience by assisting their peers entering the program. More information is available by visiting http://www.utpa.edu/programs/nsf/ or by contacting Zen Faulkes by emailing zfaulkes@utpa.edu (preferred) or phoning (956) 381-2614.

In the late 1990s, a remarkable animal was discovered in the aquaria of German fish hobbyists: a type of crayfish that could generate eggs even if they had grown up in isolation from other crayfish. This crayfish was nicknamed "Marmorkrebs" in German, which roughly translates as "marbled crab", the species has yet to be given a formal scientific name. Marmorkrebs are unique among crayfish, lobsters, shrimp, and crabs: every individual is female and can reproduce without sex. Marmorkrebs are closely related to North American crayfish, but no Marmorkrebs have been found in the wild in North America, so the source of these crayfish remains a mystery. Marmorkrebs have since been introduced into the waters of Europe and Madagascar. Because Marmorkrebs reproduce rapidly (every individual can generate eggs), they could be a serious pest species whose introduction could threaten native species. In addition to their mysterious origin and potential to be an ecological threat, Marmorkrebs are an excellent new model organism for lab research. Marmorkrebs are easy to care for and reproduce at high rates. More importantly, because they reproduce without sex, daughters are genetically identical to their mothers. Thus, any genetic change made to a mother (e.g., mutation, transgenic techniques) will be passed along faithfully to the daughters, which would allow stable strains to be established for specific types of research. That all individuals are genetically identical is also highly desirable, as it removes genetic variation as a factor that has to be accounted for in experiments. For example, the white lab rats that many people know are white because they have been inbred in an attempt to make them as similar as possible. Marmorkrebs are highly promising for laboratory studies of development, gene expression, neurobiology, and ecological physiology. This project will help introduce Marmorkrebs to North American researchers.

This award supports the symposium "Parasitic manipulation of host phenotype, or how to make a zombie", to be held at the annual Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology conference on 3-7 January 2014, in Austin, Texas. Parasitism is the most popular lifestyle on the planet, so much so that nearly all animals are infected by parasites. Many parasites change the behaviors of the animals in which they live in ways that help the parasites. For example, one species of fungus makes ants it infects leave the ant colony, climb up to a leaf, clamp its jaws on a leaf, and stay there until the ant dies in just the right place for the fungus to spread its spores. This sort of ability to control a host far surpasses anything biologists have been able to achieve, so parasites may have much to teach us about how to change behaviors. This symposium will bring together twelve scientists from around the world to give presentations, with the goal of understanding how parasites can change the behavior of their hosts, and what the consequences of those behavioral changes might be. The symposium will help bring in expertise from outside of the field of parasitology (including behavioral ecologists, immunologists, neurobiologists, ecologists, invertebrate biologists, vertebrate biologists, and evolutionary biologists) to provide a more complete picture of how parasites manipulate their hosts. There are plans for a complementary workshop on parasite identification (geared towards students) and a poster session to the symposium, allowing others to present related findings. Papers from the symposium will be published in the journal Integrative and Comparative Biology. Parasite manipulation is routinely featured in popular press, and science journalists are interested in covering this event.