News

Once numbering in the millions, sea turtle populations have dwindled to the thousands with six of seven extant sea turtle species currently listed as endangered or threatened globally. The decrease in their once abundant populations are primarily attributed to human actions and lifestyles such as fishing practices, illegal poaching, habitat loss, climate change, and pollution. … Continue reading New paper on sea turtle nest microbiomes published by former NSU MS student, Colleen McMaken

Lake Okeechobee (or Lake O) can be considered “Florida’s Inland Sea,”, as it is  the largest lake in the southeastern United States and is located at the center of Florida’s Everglades ecosystem. Before heavy development in the 19th century, Lake O provided freshwater to the Everglades ecosystem to its south. Now the lake has been permanently … Continue reading Paisley Samuel presents Harmful Algal Bloom of Lake Okeechobee thesis research at GEER

We are happy to announce the publication of this paper, first authored by one of our former Dept of Biological Sciences MS students, Yvain Desplat, in the journal Science of the Total Environment. This was a story with a long journey.  After finding no clear correlations of sponge microbial community changes with oil dosing in … Continue reading Publication of paper, “Morphological and transcriptional effects of crude oil and dispersant exposure on the marine sponge Cinachyrella alloclada”

We are pleased to announce the publication of our new PeerJ paper – “Change and stasis of distinct sediment microbiomes across Port Everglades Inlet (PEI) and the adjacent coral reefs” https://peerj.com/articles/14288. The results were the first to characterize sediment microbiomes from within the port and could have implications for dredging and other port activities that … Continue reading New PeerJ paper published describing distinct sediment microbiomes across Port Everglades Inlet (PEI) and the adjacent coral reefs

This week we were privileged to hear a great talk by Professor Baldomero (Toto) Olivera. He gave an innovative tale of how marine science informed medical treatment of chronic and painful neurological  disease. Baldomero Olivera is a Filipino molecular biologist  known for discovery of diversity and medical translation of  cone snail toxins important for neuroscience. These molecules, called conotoxins, led to … Continue reading The Golden Age of Science seminar series at HCAS welcomes Dr. Baldomero Olivera

Research scientist, Dr Lauren Krausfeldt, works in our molecular microbiology and genomics laboratory at Nova Southeastern University. She presented her research results on harmful algal blooms (HAB) as a talk, “The Functional Diversity And Biological Interactions That Drive Cyanobacterial Harmful Algal Blooms”, at the 2022 American Society of Microbiology general meeting in Washington DC. The … Continue reading Dr. Lauren Krausfeldt presents HAB results at ASM and interviews for Science

Our Halmos College of Art and Sciences held an excellent fourth biennial graduate research symposium on Feb 24 – 25, 2022. Many students gave great talks, including our own Colleen McMaken and postdoctoral scientist Lauren Krausfeldt. Colleen garnered second prize among outstanding >20 student talks. This also allowed HCAS to hear Drs. Lauren Toth, and … Continue reading HCAS holds Biennial Graduate Research Symposium Jamboree and One of our Lab Members Wins a Student Prize

A collection of PNAS papers has been published to describe the why and how to sequence the whole genomes of the approximately 2 million species of eukaryotes on the planet at a high, chromosome level quality. This task will be accomplished by the Earth BioGenome Project (EBP) and its coordinated “network of networks” led by … Continue reading Collection of PNAS Papers Highlighting Cogent Reasons and Standards for the Large Scale Sequencing of All Eukaryotes by the Earth Biogenome Project

The GIGA IV conference (https://giga4.sciencesconf.org/) ran November 16 – 18, 2021, and was put together fairly quickly, on the heels of a larger genomics conference – Biodiversity Genomics 2021 (https://www.darwintreeoflife.org/news_item/biodiversity-genomics-2021-sequencing-genomes-across-the-planet/). Nonetheless, GIGA IV was organized by Jean François Flot with a turnout of 141 total registrants. Early Career Researchers from the European IGNITE training network … Continue reading GIGA holds its 4th conference online, with many highlights