Madison
Sparks
Sponsor: Anya Brown, Ph.D. Evolution & Ecology Eelgrass is a foundation species whose populations are declining due to seagrass wasting disease (SWD). Because warming can increase disease, it is important to understand how the dynamics of SWD will change with rising temperatures. Common seagrass grazer, Pentidotea resecata, preferentially feeds on diseased tissues implying they may reduce disease severity. The relationship between grazing, disease, and temperature is unknown. We hypothesized that disease severity (area of disease lesions on a blade) and grazing show a unimodal relationship with temperature, where severity is highest when grazing is lowest. To test this, we exposed eelgrass blades with and without isopods to five temperature treatments. Grazing was highest between 14-16ºC and lowest at 10ºC. To test whole plant response to grazing and temperature, we exposed diseased plants and grazers to an ambient and elevated temperature treatment and measured plant growth, grazed, and diseased area on blades. At ambient temperatures, plants expended more energy into growth when grazers were present. At higher temperatures, grazing did not affect plant growth. Disease was not significantly affected by grazing or temperature. These experiments suggest that high and low temperatures limit grazing, which can influence the effects grazers have on eelgrass growth, but minimally affects disease severity. Fishing for Rare Diseases
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Madison Sparks
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Rare genetic diseases are often neglected for very good reasons: not many people have them, so they are not a public priority and not likely to generate profits for a company. There are two very good reasons to study rare genetic diseases: (1) it is emotionally taxing for the rare disease community to be neglected and (2) there is a lot of very interesting biology to discover when studying rare diseases. A powerful way to study gene function is through orthologous genes in model organisms. For example, the chihuahua gene in zebrafish is orthologous to COLA1 in humans, which is associated with the human disease osteogenesis imperfecta. This project aims to connect rare human genetic diseases to zebrafish genotypes through shared phenotypes. Previous research has identified orthologous genes for select diseases in different model organisms. While unethical in humans, series of gene knockouts allow for in-depth analysis of associated phenotypes with higher confidence due to controlled experiment conditions and larger sample sizes compared to humans. This research aims to establish this connection between genotype and phenotype in zebrafish to extend it to humans, potentially predicting human genes responsible for genetic diseases given observed phenotypes and establishing a tool for diagnosis. UC Davis 35 th Annual Undergraduate Research, Scholarship and Creative Activities Conference 222 Gender Disparity in Microfinance Loan Recipients Nandhini Sridhar
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UC Davis / Molecular & Cellular Bio / 2024
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Madison Sparks