Dr. Josephine Clark-Curtiss, whose career spanned half a century, worked tirelessly to help mitigate the spread of dangerous infectious diseases. After a valiant personal battle against ovarian cancer, she passed away on Nov. 6, 2023.
Postdoctoral candidate Rui Chen won best research poster in the EPI Research Day 2023 Early-Stage Investigator Poster Competition. Her poster consisted of several interrelated projects, but her main research focused on characterizing the function of inwardly rectifying potassium (Kir) channels in insects nervous system.
The Emerging Pathogens Institute’s annual Research Day event celebrates pathogens research and the people who work in this critical academic space. After three years of meeting virtually, the event was held in person at the Reitz Union on Feb. 16, 2023 on the University of Florida’s campus. Researchers and students exhibited 123 abstracts and posters that probed pathogens and infectious diseases topics spanning from lab research to field investigations and bioinformatic analyses.
A team of UF researchers were early advocates that people should be tested for COVID-19 and monitored for viral variants—regardless of their vaccination status.
From land to sea, EPI’s Research Day keynote talks featured recent leaps in pathogen research affecting people and the aquatic animal source foods we consume.
A plaque, or area of destroyed cells in a cell culture shows the presence of an active SARS-CoV-2 infection. (Image courtesy of Mike Norris) A University of Florida research team is harnessing the power of genomic editing to illuminate druggable targets in human cells for the fight against…
New research by EPI investigator KC Jeong looks at how a host’s genetic background strongly influences the composition and development of its gut microbiota.
Whole genome sequencing allows researchers to quantify diversification of Mycobacterium tuberculosis within a host, showing that the individual bacteria comprising an infection are not all identical clones. Using a known TB cluster, Emerging Pathogens Institute researchers confirm that hosts can transmit all — or just some — of the genetic diversity unique to their mTB population to a new victim.
A virus that incorporated itself into mammal genomes over 70 million years ago may have helped humanity’s ancestors survive the cataclysmic conditions that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous era.
Recently, University of Florida Health researchers discovered why an influenza virus was making young people admitted to UF Health Shands Hospital so sick: It contained a mutation that allowed it to infect the patients’ lower respiratory tracts.
