Gary N. Cherr, PhD, University of Caliornia Davis 1984 - US grants

This award supports purchase of a state-of-the-art scanning laser confocal microscopy system that includes an upright microscope with motorized stage and multiple lasers. The instrument is equipped for use of methods requiring oil or water immersion, and has fast scanning capabilities suitable for study of motile cells undergoing rapid physiological changes. Research projects that will employ the microscope include studies of sperm-egg interactions and the physiological and biochemical events surrounding fertilization in marine and freshwater organisms. Other projects include studies of metabolic depression in cells connected with intracellular translocation of a molecular chaperone after environmental challenges, and studies of photobleaching of corals in the tropics and its relationship to DNA damage caused by ultraviolet light. In addition to its role in research, the instrument will be used by undergraduate and graduate students in formal courses and related training activities. The instrument will be located in the Fluorescence Imaging Facility at the Bodega Marine Laboratory along with other instruments used for complementary methods. The instrument will be available for use by investigators and students from the University's main campus as well as those at the Laboratory.

The University of California-Davis has been awarded a grant to enhance experimental facilities to study climate change at the Bodega Marine Lab. The Bodega Marine Lab is one of the worlds premier field facilities for marine research and education. For more than 45 years, the Bodega Marine Lab has served as a gateway for research and educational activities from San Francisco Bay to Point Arena. The Bodega Lab is poised to respond quickly to pressing societal problems plaguing the coastal zone. With recent national report cards on the state of ocean ecosystems calling for climate change research, a new tri-state agreement (California, Oregon and Washington) coordinating coastal conservation efforts, and new sources of national and state funding anticipated, Bodega Marine Lab proposes to construct new facilities that can easily generate and control complex multi-variable environments needed by researchers and students to study the effects of climate change.

The climate change facility at Bodega Marine Lab provides an outstanding and unparalleled opportunity as an ocean observing network that provides long-term data on a complex suite of real-world coastal environmental variables needed for the creation of realistic scenarios in controlled environments. The award will provide funds for a facility that is designed for work with marine, estuarine, and freshwater species, including non-native and larval organisms. A modular arrangement of the facility allows flexibility needed for experimental replicates, and easily accommodates static, semi-controlled, closed, and flow-through experimental systems. The climate facility will provide co-located utilities needed to easily manipulate environmental variables typical of climate change that can be controlled and monitored on-site or remotely via a computer-interface.

The highly interdisciplinary and collaborative user base and experiments enabled by the infrastructure will provide an in-depth understanding of the complex multi-level ecosystem responses to climate change and climate effects on larval biology, marine physiology, environmental toxicology, molecular genetics, marine ecology, fish and invertebrate behavior, marine botany, conservation biology, and invasive species biology. The project will attract new interdisciplinary collaborations, increase facility capacity to address climate change issues, enhance training of new scientists, and advance marine lab facility design and performance.

Gary N Cherr
IOS-0843649
Defensins at the Interface of Male and Female Innate Immunity

The mammalian female reproductive tract has immune responses to protect against foreign invaders, including the attraction of white blood cells to the area. How sperm cells overcome these defenses as well, and at the same time, play a role in white blood cell attraction, are key questions in reproductive biology. The central hypothesis of this grant seeks to link these two important steps of mammalian reproduction into a unifying concept. The investigators have recently demonstrated that molecules called beta-defensins uniformly coat the entire surface of mammalian sperm during maturation in the male tract. Beta-defensins are key effector peptides of innate immunity found throughout the animal kingdom. These peptides have potent antimicrobial activities and act as chemical attractants. While the expression of beta-defensin peptides by reproductive tissue has been described in several invertebrate species, the presence of beta-defensins on the sperm surface is a novel finding and has only been recently described in mammals. Their presence may reflect adaptations of these peptides for internal fertilization. It is proposed that sperm-associated beta-defensins, which form a uniform surface coat on spermatozoa, promote fertility by first protecting sperm from immunorecognition by the female reproductive tract and then providing enhanced innate immune protection in part by attracting white blood cells. The investigators propose to test these ideas through a combination of in vivo and in vitro experiments using a mouse model. This innovative project will yield answers to longstanding questions in reproductive biology and will provide insights into the sources of variation of reproductive fitness in mammals. The understanding of these mechanisms holds significance for managing reproduction in domestic species, evaluating reproductive fitness in wildlife, and maintaining reproductive health in humans.

The University of California Davis has been awarded funds to establish a micro-filtration/ultraviolet light (UV) sterilization system at Bodega Marine Laboratory (BML) for select seawater effluent streams exiting the research facility. The project will also renovate an existing building and coupled with the new sterilization system space efficiency and research capability will be maximized. The system is a state-of-the-art disinfection system for seawater discharge, the only model currently allowed by the State of California and replaces a dated chlorination system representing a potential risk to the adjacent State Marine Protected Area and two National Marine Sanctuaries. It features a much smaller footprint and technological advances that will enable other efficiencies to be realized at BML, including increased treatment capacity and holding facilities. Recent national report cards on the state of ocean ecosystems call for research on the effects of climate change, invasive species, and emerging diseases on marine environments. This award is a timely leverage of an existing NSF-funded state-of-the-art climate change facility designed for research with marine, estuarine, and freshwater species, including non-native and larval organisms. Thus BML will become a highly unique facility for researchers to utilize for the new era of environmental research on non-indigenous/invasive species and emerging marine pathogens.

The intellectual merit of this award will be the innovative and diverse research of the visiting scientists and graduate and undergraduate students who will be supported by the increased ability to investigate introduced/invasive species and pathogens that are the basis for emerging diseases and changing biodiversity in general. BML is internationally known for its research on introduced and invasive species in estuaries and marine environments. Since its construction in 1966, the UC Davis Bodega Marine Laboratory (BML; http://www.bml.ucdavis.edu/) has served as a gateway for research and educational activities from San Francisco Bay to Point Arena. Located 60 miles north of San Francisco, the facility provides logistic support and services to researchers and classes that come from all over the world to explore the unique coastal environments. The ability to study non-indigenous/invasive species and pathogens in order to understand mechanisms of adaptation and transmission is key to solving the complex environmental challenge before us. The broader impact of the project will be the benefits of the resulting research on national health, prosperity and welfare. Specifically the facilities will attract new interdisciplinary collaborations, increase facility capacity to address invasive species and disease issues, enhance training of new scientists, and advance marine laboratory facility design and performance. The results from such studies will have implications for national environmental health, welfare, and security.

The University of California Davis Bodega Marine Laboratory (BML) will establish a fiber-optic local area network that is high-performance, fault-tolerant, and adaptable. BML is located in a remote region of the Northern California coast, despite the remote location, BML has access to available bandwidth up to 10 GB/s through AT&T's fiber service, comparable to bandwidth offerings in major metropolitan areas but the aged, internal local area network infrastructure (developed when the WAN bandwidth was 1.5Mbps) is a severe limitation. BML's fiber internet connection is currently analogous to a "new superhighway", however BML's internal connection to the outside (WAN) is analogous to a "bumpy gravel road" slowing down the advantage that the external high speed infrastructure can provide. The new high performance internal architecture is designed to support research, instruction, public education, and data acquisition/dissemination; both across the facility and beyond. BML is situated in a scientifically relevant location. It is the primary open-coast research facility for research in upwelling environments along the California coast. Sophisticated technical resources include ample bandwidth (external internet access), network storage, video conferencing capability, access to long-term atmospheric, oceanographic, and biological data, BML- and agency-operated sensor networks, an ocean-observing node, University library resources, seawater system, pathogen containment facilities, climate change research facilities, access to the 362-acre Bodega Marine Reserve, and specialized laboratory instruments and microscopy.

Enhanced network capacity provides both UC Davis researchers, visiting researchers, post docs, and students with bandwidth sufficient to easily explore, discover, analyze and utilize data at other sites as well as local data sources. Further, education and outreach programs, both at BML and elsewhere will benefit directly from the enhanced infrastructure. Public education programs will be able to disseminate science directly to the public and public visitors to BML will learn about research via high-quality, interactive computer-driven interpretive displays that will access data products across the local area network. Research at UC Davis BML is highly interdisciplinary particularly in the impacts of climate change on ecosystems, with a strong linkage between physical land-sea interface data (e.g. oceanographic, meterological) and biological responses. Strong collaborations between the Bodega Ocean Observing Node and the Bodega Ocean Acidification Research group means that large physical data sets are shared and integrated into biological (genomic and transcriptomic) data on a routine basis. The critically endangered white abalone captive breeding program under a federal ESA permit is located at BML and generates very large High Definition and 360-degree video and image files for analysis of larvae and feeding by broodstock. For data of this scale, the current LAN inhibits routine file transfer or backup during working hours. Often backup or simple file transfer between labs can take overnight. Examples of 'big data' challenges at BML include accessing computing clusters for genome and transcriptome analyses of populations of marine invertebrates as well as proteomic analyses from endangered species (white abalone) for assessment of reproductive conditioning. High-resolution numerical models and management of high-resolution ocean-observing data (e.g., high frequency radar, pCO2, O2, conductivity, fluorescence, etc.) provide the basis for biological responses to climate change as related to changes in normal upwelling patterns. Interdisciplinary environmental research intensity, diversity and collaborations are growing rapidly in part due to the coalescence of more than 90 marine science and policy faculty at UC Davis as part of the new Coastal and Marine Sciences Institute.