Recent News

An unusual melioidosis infection in Australia offers researchers a rare window into understanding how highly pathogenic bacteria can adapt to life within a host.

In a wide-ranging discussion, UF's Emerging Pathogens Institute Director J. Glenn Morris, M.D., fields big-picture questions about the COVID-19 pandemic unfolding nationally and in Florida.

Behind the scenes in mid-March, a group of researchers, students and lab technicians across campus came together and built a high throughput testing lab in the Emerging Pathogens Institute in just 10 days. “The timeline was so compressed, something like this would normally take at least a month,” says UF molecular biologist Tony Maurelli.

UF researchers uncovered evidence that the bacteria which cause cholera, Vibrio cholerae, have established an aquatic reservoir in Haitian waterways where they are now adapting and evolving. This marks the first time the pathogenic bacteria are known to have a reservoir outside of the Bay of Bengal, which is traditionally viewed as their home.

Researchers who study outbreak transmission dynamics can offer insight to the spread and containment of COVID-19 based on past emerging coronaviruses. UF biology professor Derek Cummings has investigated outbreak dynamics of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), which emerged in 2002, and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) which emerged in 2012.

A new study published today in Science coauthored by EPI member Ira Longini analyzes effects of China's travel ban in slowing the spread of the new coronavirus which causes COVID-19.

UF research professor John Lednicky can pull live viruses out of thin air—and grow them. His past decades of inquiry into coronaviruses have positioned him as one of UF’s go-to experts on the newly emerged SARS-CoV-2 pathogen that is spreading globally.

Ever wonder what scientists are up to behind the scenes, when they are not consumed with crunching data, or endlessly editing papers for publication? They just may be traveling in far-flung places — hunting for data and building relationships with the people and places they study. This is the second photo essay in an occasional series, Science Scenes, in which we invite you to explore how EPI's faculty and affiliate researchers work across the globe.

UF researchers have resolved a two-decade old mystery centered upon how the bacteria Chlamydia divide and reproduce. Newly published results from the lab of Anthony Maurelli, a microbiologist in UF’s College of Public Health and Health Professions and the EPI, reveal that how these parasitic pathogens replicate diverges from a nearly universal norm.

EPI's thirteenth annual research day took place yesterday, with nearly 150 poster presentations and two keynote speakers who both addressed the latest research in dengue, a growing global public health menace.