UF biological station receives $20,000 grant
The UF Nature Coast Biological Station in Cedar Key will receive a $20,000 grant to research spotted seatrout in the Gulf of Mexico.
The grant, which UF will receive at the end of the term, will fund a study in which fishers will catch spotted seatrout and put plastic tracking tags inside them. If another fisher catches the tagged fish, they will report how well it’s handling the tag.
The grant comes from The Conservation Fund, a national organization that works to protect the environment and help local businesses, said Ann Simonelli, The Conservation Fund’s media relations director. She said the fund has been working to help conserve natural resources in North Florida.
"We realized there was an opportunity for some groundwork to happen (in North Florida)," Simonelli said.
Mike Allen, the director of the station, said the study is a pilot project that will focus on how the fish react to the tags. If UF’s station is successful with the tagging process, it will expand to study the fish more extensively.
"If it has a high survival rate, we can follow up the next year with a larger-scale tag to study the fish," he said.
Allen said the project will stimulate the North Florida economy by encouraging local fisheries to become a part of the study.
"We’re doing a study that’s going to improve a popular fishery on the Gulf of Mexico," he said.
-Jordan Johnson
UF finds way to personalize medicine
A team of UF researchers is creating a new way to personalize medicine for patients through genotyping.
The study, led by UF’s Personalized Medicine Program, aims to gain an understanding of someone’s genetic makeup and how he or she responds to certain medications, said Larisa Cavallari, an associate professor in UF’s College of Pharmacy and the associate director of the program.
This term, the researchers are running genotyping tests to see what drugs work best for patients with heart disease after they’ve gone through a medical procedure to unclog their arteries.
"Patients got genetic testing here (in Gainesville), and with some we saw that their genotype might not respond well to usual treatment, and they would need a different drug," she said. "Using genotyping information, we reduce the risk of having adverse effects."
Cavallari said she hopes genotyping helps people in the future.
"We would genotype people for a bunch of different genes and variations of genes when they’re healthy," she said. "For the rest of that person’s life, you could use that information to help treat them in the future."
UF is a leader in genotyping, Cavallari said. It is one of six institutions across the country funded to do this type of genetic research, she said.
"What we are doing here is unique because we are leading the initiative," she said.
-Rachel Howard
UF astronomer finds galaxy cluster
A UF professor and astronomer has found a galaxy cluster far, far away — 8.5 billion light-years away.
This term, Anthony Gonzalez published his discovery: a galaxy cluster, which is a group of hundreds or thousands of galaxies bound together by gravity.
Researchers typically don’t see more than five galaxy clusters this big and this old, Gonzalez said.
Because the cluster is so far away, he said the scientists are looking at the galaxies the way they were billions of years ago.
Over the course of four years, Gonzalez and a team of 22 other astronomers have found thousands of clusters. They have captured photographs of the clusters through a laboratory in Pasadena, California.
Through their research, the astronomers are studying the impact of the clusters’ environments. They will also look at the properties of the universe for cosmology and the science behind the origin and development of the universe, Gonzalez said.
With the help of the Hubble Space Telescope, the team’s next step is gathering images to find distant exploding stars, called supernovae, within the clusters.
"The goal is to learn about the universe," he said.
- Ashley Martin
