A team effort co-lead by the dynamic duo of Dr. Alexandra Vargas and Dr. Melissa DeBiasse from their time in the lab of Dr. Joseph Ryan has produced a new paper, “Morphological and dietary changes encoded in the genome of Beroe ovata, a ctenophore-eating ctenophore”. Ctenophores from this lineage are specialist predators of other ctenophores and have lost the prey capture apparatus of sticky tentacles found in most other ctenophores, along with numerous other morphological, cellular, and behavioral changes. This genome provides new insight into how these changes arose. In addition to the paper, a searchable BLAST database for the genome is available: http://ryanlab.whitney.ufl.edu/bovadb/

Lab technician Orianna Duh has achieved a new milestone in her scientific career: publication of her first paper! Some of her master’s thesis work, done in the lab of Dr. Danielle McDonald at the University of Miami, can be found in this article: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00360-024-01547-3

The gills of fish have oxygen-sensing neuroepithelial cells. Orianna found that these cells increase in density under severe hypoxia in the toadfish, a fish the McDonald lab uses to study environmental stress.

Led by the Martindale lab’s incredible Dorothy Mitchell, see the full paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-024-05901-7

Whitney lab news link: https://www.whitney.ufl.edu/articles/ctenophore-deploys-a-rapid-injury-response-dating-back-to-the-last-common-animal.html

Orianna joins the Edgar lab after receiving her master’s degree working in the lab of Dr. Danielle McDonald at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science.