Genomics

The BIO5 Institute solicited COVID-19 research proposals for seed grants supplied by the Technology and Research Initiative Fund (TRIF). In a rapid response to the pandemic, interdisciplinary teams of two or more principle investigators were encouraged submit applications for basic science, technology, clinical or population research.

To be considered a competitive applicant, teams needed to demonstrate that the personnel and infrastructure needed to immediately begin the proposed studies were in place at the time of submission.

Each team was asked to write a two-page proposal detailing the significance of the project, in addition to deliverables such as manuscripts and preliminary data for specific external grant mechanisms.

Teams could request up to $60K for research supplies, small equipment, staff and student compensation and core facility use. A detailed budget and justification were required to supplement the main proposal.

Principle investigator biosketches were also required. Co-lead applicants needed to be BIO5 members or willing to apply for membership.

Applications were reviewed based on three main criteria.

• Proposals were judged on their potential to make immediate local, national and global COVID-19 impacts.

• Because grants were solicited from teams of two or more leads, collaboration and teamwork were assessed and highly valued.

• The use of UArizona core facilities by the researchers was also compared between applicants.

Overall, 13 of the 55 seed grant applications were selected for six-months of funding. Over $500,000 of TRIF resources have been dedicated to address COVID-19 through these projects.

About the University of Arizona BIO5 Institute
The BIO5 Institute at the University of Arizona connects and mobilizes top researchers in agriculture, engineering, biomedicine, pharmacy, basic science, and computational science to find creative solutions to humanity’s most pressing health and environmental challenges. Since 2001, this interdisciplinary approach has been an international model of how to conduct collaborative research, and has resulted in disease prevention strategies, promising new therapies, innovative diagnostics and devices, and improved food crops.
For more information: BIO5.org (Follow us: Facebook | Twitter | YouTube | Instagram | LinkedIn).

University of Arizona researchers have begun using a test that can detect the presence of the COVID-19 virus in a person who has no obvious symptoms and possibly determine whether someone was once infected with COVID-19. By studying the antibodies present in a person's blood, the two lead researchers, UA immunologists Dr. Deepta Bhattacharya and Dr. Janko Nikolich-Zugich, hope to answer questions such as what unique antibodies are important to fight the novel coronavirus, how much of the population already had it and recovered or showed no symptoms, and whether it's possible to get reinfected with the virus.

UArizona researchers and staff at all levels are working to assemble COVID-19 collection kits. Led by Dr. David T Harris, Arizona Health Sciences Biorepository executive director, UArizona Department of Immunobiology professor, and BIO5 faculty member, research staff had begun producing the kits over the weekend, ultimately assembling more than 1,600 kits. Dr. Harris said that while assembling the collection kits is fairly easy, it's finding the materials for those kits that's the difficult part. Despite already making nearly 2,000 of these collection kits over the weekend, Dr. Harris said staff aim to assemble 10,000 over the next two weeks.

A collaborative study led by researchers are the University of Arizona and Henan Normal University in China, traces acoustic communication across the tree of life of land-living vertebrates. Results of the study revealed that the ability to vocalize goes back hundreds of millions of years, associated with a nocturnal lifestyle and has remained stable. Surprisingly, acoustic communication does not seem to drive the formation of new species across vertebrates.

UArizona Pharmacology professor and BIO5 member Dr. Rajesh Khanna was named a senior member of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI) for his work with Regulonix. Dr. Khanna co-founded and serves as the chief scientific officer of Regulonix. The company is in the process of developing non-opioid therapies for chronic pain relief and management.

UA CALS researchers including BIO5 members Drs. Shane Burgess and Patricia Stock, explain the advantages of having a complete genome description of its academic beef herd, after an SNP (single nucleotide polymorphisms) typing project was completed this past May at the V Bar V Agricultural Experiment Station in Coconino County. The goal is to use the extensive data, to help cattle growers improve production by giving them an affordable method for identifying predictable and specific genetic traits in cows.

After nine years of work, an international consortium of scientists, including UA Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology associate professor and BIO5 faculty member Dr. Mike Barker, has released gene sequences for more than 1100 plant species. The massive undertaking is part of the One Thousand Plant Transcriptomes Initiative (1KP), a global collaboration to examine plant species, genes and genomes diversification back to the ancestors of flowering plants and green algae.

Swollen Shoot disease is affecting cacao trees in Ghana. UA Plant Sciences professor Dr. Judith Brown, notes that the disease is threatening to affect the supply of chocolate. Dr. Brown is using genome sequencing technology to look deeper into the viruses found to cause damage in cacao plant samples.

A team of University of Arizona researchers who looked for genetic differences between glioblastoma cells from long- and short-term survivors discovered that those who survived longer had a protein that might be targeted to increase survival in all glioblastoma patients. The results were presented this month at the Society for Neuro-Oncology conference in New Orleans. This work is in its early stages, and the researchers say they are many years and millions of dollars away from potential translation into treatments for patients.