UROC Alum awarded a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology
Kevin Johnson, UROC Scholar, (2012) was recently awarded a $138,000 National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for fiscal year 2017, in competitive area #1, Broadening Participation of Groups Under-represented in Biology.
Kevin worked with mentor, Dr. Aparna Sreenivasan while at CSUMB and went on to earn his Doctorate at UC Santa Barbara (UCSB) with support from a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.
On top of his recent NSF award, Kevin was also awarded the 2017 UCSB Lancaster Dissertation award, which is an annual award that recognizes dissertations deemed by the UCSB Awards Committee to have significant impact on the field in terms of methodological and substantive contributions.
"There are generally a few of these funded every year (2015 and 2016 had 23 proposals funded each year). For this project I have a sponsoring scientist at Louisiana State University, Dr. Morgan Kelly. "— Kevin Johnson
Read Kevin's abstract here:
A large-scale, experimental test of local adaption in the eastern oyster, Crassostrea virginica, along a natural salinity gradient in the Gulf of Mexico
This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2017, Broadening Participation of Groups Under-represented in Biology. The fellowship supports research and training of the fellow that will increase the participation of groups underrepresented in biology. The title of this research plan for this fellowship to Kevin Marquez Johnson is “A large-scale, experimental test of local adaption in the eastern oyster along a natural salinity gradient in the Gulf of Mexico”. The host institution for the fellowship is Louisiana State University and the sponsoring scientist is Dr. Morgan W. Kelly. The project is focused on identifying how oysters from different regions in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) respond to variations in temperature and salinity. This work is important as changes in land-use, oceanographic currents, and rainfall totals in the GOM can dramatically influence salinity and temperature. By investigating how present-day populations respond to changes in temperature and salinity, this research will provide a valuable resource to conservation biologists, state managers, and small-scale farmers as they maintain over 2 million acres of public and private oyster grounds that produced 10.9 million pounds of oysters in 2012.
This work will explore adaptations to local environmental conditions from three oyster reefs located along a natural salinity gradient in the Gulf of Mexico. Evidence for adaptation to salinity and temperature will be assessed by measuring three indicators of oyster health: (i) the rate at which they digest food, (ii) the rate at which individuals grow and (iii) the heritability of environmentally-induced epigenetic modifications. Utilizing classic metrics for oyster health (i.e. digestion and growth rates) across multiple generations will provide the necessary tools to determine if oysters from these three reefs are locally adapted to the environment they are from. This research will also use epigenomic sequencing to track DNA methylation patterns from the parent population (F0) to the second generation (F2). Tracking these environmentally inducible epigenomic changes across multiple generations will provide valuable insight into the heritability of these markers and explore the variation of these markers in natural populations. Finally, this work will broaden participation from under-represented groups in biology at both Louisiana State University and local high schools. At the University level, the fellow will mentor undergraduate students and encourage these undergraduate researchers to participate in the Louis Stokes Louisiana Alliance for Minority Participation (LS-LAMP) program. At the high school level, the fellow will engage with 8 local high school teacher and student pairs to establish a summer education course in bioinformatics and the utility of these tools in both the natural sciences and medical research.