UF researcher discovers six new species of frog
A UF researcher at the Florida Museum of Natural History, along with a research team, has discovered six new species of African clawed frogs.
These small frogs have gone unnoticed for decades due to their similarity to other known species, said David Blackburn, the senior author of the research paper and a curator of herpetology, the study of amphibians, at the Florida Museum.
He said he believes this new discovery will offer new opportunities for research.
“African clawed frogs are found all over the world in labs,” Blackburn said.
These frogs will be especially useful to the reproduction biology field, he said. Scientists have used these frogs as pregnancy tests. These species lay eggs when exposed to the hormones found in a pregnant woman’s urine.
Blackburn said he also sees advances in the genetics field with this discovery.
These species have genetic variations not found in most animal species known today, he said. While humans have two copies of genes in every cell, one species of frog has 12.
“Every new species that is out there is another piece of the puzzle to understanding nature,” Blackburn said.
- Meryl Kornfield
UF researchers link alcohol taxes and gonorrhea, chlamydia
Researchers at UF Health have discovered a link between alcohol tax rates and the transmittance of gonorrhea and chlamydia.
Using data from a 2011 Maryland law which increased the alcohol tax to six percent, researchers found that Maryland experienced 2,400 fewer cases of gonorrhea in the 18 months after the new law was enacted.
Increasing the alcohol tax also decreased sexually transmitted infection rates among all ages, said Stephanie Staras, a UF assistant professor of health outcomes and policy and the lead researcher on the study. Almost half of all sexually transmitted diseases are found in 15- to 24-year-olds nationally.
“Consuming alcohol before sex increases the chances of getting an STI by decreasing the chances of using a condom, and increasing the chances of picking a partner who has an STI,” Staras said.
She said she believes policymakers should consider increasing alcohol taxes and looking into other policies that could influence STI rates. “The findings from our study add to the extensive research showing increasing alcohol taxes reduces human suffering from diseases and accidents,” Staras said.
- Meryl Kornfield
UF research focuses on estrogen’s link to memory
UF researchers are studying estrogen’s role in combating memory loss.
During the two-year study, researchers found the alpha receptor, which helps store memories in the brain, can help improve memory when paired with an injection of estrogen. Estrogen protects the brain and memory functions.
They decided to do the research after another study found the benefits of estrogen decrease after a woman turns 65 years old, said Thomas Foster, a UF neuroscience professor. UF has completed research before about estrogen’s role in protecting memory loss, but the study made him wonder why the effects of estrogen diminish with age.
For the study, researchers injected a virus into middle-aged rats’ minds to rejuvenate them, he said. After they were given estrogen shots, they tested alpha and beta receptors in their brains to see if there was improvement in memory. There was an improvement in memory with the alpha receptor.
But estrogen can cause cancer, Foster said. In the future, researchers want to see if something other than estrogen can act on the alpha receptor.
“We don’t know what it does, how it does that,” he said.
- Caitlin Ostroff
