C-MAIKI 

#MahiMicrobe2018 Award Recipients

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$5,000 - Randi Rollins (PI: Rob Cowie)

Project Title:  I can’t live without you: rat lungworm and microbes 

Summary: This project will identify the microbial communities present in Angiostrongylus cantonensis (rat lungworm) and its obligate hosts (rats and snails) at different stages of the parasite’s life cycle.

 

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$5,000 - Shayle Matsuda (PI: Judy Lemus)

Project Title: Does structureshape the microbial landscape? Examining intra-colonial variability in microbial (Symbiodinaceae spp. and bacteria) communities in a Hawaiian coral (Montipora capitata)

Summary: The project will assess spatial microbial patterning – diversity and composition – within and across individual coral colonies and identify the mechanisms which make corals more susceptible to stress. 

 

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$3,500 - Wesley Sparagon (PI: Craig Nelson)

Project Title: Synergistic impacts of algal DOM and temperature on coral reef bacteria

Summary: This project investigates how coral reef-associated bacteria respond to the combination of thermal stress and algal competition using high-throughput DNA and RNA sequencing. Findings from this study will help us better understand how microbial communities affect the fitness of coral reefs during periods of stress.

 

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$3,500 - Solange Saxby (PI: Yong Li)

Project Title: Kalo; a functional prebiotic food

Summary: Kalo is a nutrient dense food high in vitamins, minerals, and dietary fiber and it has the potential to be a prebiotic food and to improve gut health. This research project will investigate Kalo'spotentialas a functional prebiotic food by stimulating human digestion and fecal fermentation.

 

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$2,000 - Sarah Tucker (PI: Mike Rappe)

Project Title: Examining the metabolic activities of abundant marine microbes at the population-level

Summary: This research project seeks to define the metabolisms of the most abundant marine microbesat the ecologically-relevant scale of populations and will examine the metabolisms of abundant marine microbesat the surface of nearshore, coastal, and oceanic environments of Kāne‘oheBay, Hawai‘i using a genetic sequencing tool called metatranscriptomics.

 

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$2,000 – Sabrina Diemert (PI: Tao Yan)

Project Title: Iron-reducingbacteria community changes and metagenomics under different water conditions (drinking water vs. wastewater)

Summary: This project aims to investigate how iron-reducing bacteria (IRBs) behave in communities and how they change in different environments by growing IRB microcosms. Bacterial community DNA will be analyzedvia 16S amplicon sequencing and metagenomics techniques. The funding from #mahimicrobe2018 will be used to support the cost of training on the Nanopore MinION DNA sequencer with aims to apply this new sequencing technique inthe present study.  

 

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$2,000 - Maria Costantini (PI: Floyd Reed)

Project Title:Examining the role of symbiotic microbes in preventing the extinction of a critically endangered Hawaiian honeycreeper

Summary:This project seeks to determine the effect of captivity on the endangered Hawaiian honeycreeper ‘Akikiki gut microbiome and to develop better captive breeding practices. 

 

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$1,000 - Andrian Gajigan(PI: Grieg Steward)

Title: Outsmarting the host: Exploring the role of giant virus-encoded microRNAs in regulating host machinery

Summary: This study will utilize a giantvirus-phytoplankton model system isolated from Hawaiʻi waters to investigate the molecular mechanism of infection. Small RNA and transcriptome sequencing will be performed to facilitate the discovery of novel and evolutionary conserved microRNAs, and to gain insights into the expression patterns of microRNA gene targets, respectively. 

 

$1,000 - Alexandra Paer(PI: Qing Li)

Title: Interactions between gastrointestinalmicrobiome and corn silk flavones in relevance to Alzheimer’s disease prevention and treatment

Summary: This study will determine the effect of microbiomes on absorption and transportation of flavonoids (such as isoorientin and derivatives, which has been implicatedin Alzheimer’s) to the brain and will investigate microbiome metabolism of flavonoids, possibly to smaller molecules that may be more readily absorbed and transported.

 

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