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Author: Donna Huber

Trainee Spotlight: Justine Shiau

Donna Huber on February 9, 2022

Justine Shiau, an NIH T32 fellow in Dr. Dennis Kyle's laboratory, is originally from Taipei, Taiwan, and moved to the states after elementary school. She received her bachelor's degree in Biology from the Pennsylvania State University, where she became interested in disease transmission, disease ecology, and parasitology while working with Dr. Ashutosh Pathak. Upon graduation, …

Differential Growth Rates and In Vitro Drug Susceptibility to Currently Used Drugs for Multiple Isolates of Naegleria fowleri

Donna Huber on February 9, 2022

The free-living amoeba Naegleria fowleri, which typically dwells within warm, freshwater environments, can opportunistically cause primary amoebic meningoencephalitis (PAM), a disease with a mortality rate of >97%. The lack of positive treatment outcomes for PAM has prompted the discovery and development of more effective therapeutics, yet most studies utilize only one or two clinical isolates. …

Insulin-like peptide 3 stimulates hemocytes to proliferate in anautogenous and facultatively autogenous mosquitoes

Donna Huber on February 7, 2022

Most mosquito species are anautogenous, which means they must blood feed on a vertebrate host to produce eggs, while a few are autogenous and can produce eggs without blood feeding. Egg formation is best understood in the anautogenous mosquito Aedes aegypti where insulin-like peptides (ILPs), ovary ecdysteroidogenic hormone (OEH) and 20-hydroxyecdysone (20E) interact to regulate …

CRISPR/Cas9-induced disruption of Bodo saltans paraflagellar rod-2 gene reveals its importance for cell survival

Donna Huber on January 31, 2022

Developing transfection protocols for marine protists is an emerging field that will allow the functional characterization of protist genes and their roles in organism responses to the environment. We developed a CRISPR/Cas9 editing protocol for Bodo saltans, a free-living kinetoplastid with tolerance to both marine and freshwater conditions, and a close non-parasitic relative of trypanosomatids. …

Jessica Kissinger elected as AAAS Fellow

Donna Huber on January 27, 2022

Dr. Jessica Kissinger with student Three University of Georgia faculty have been named Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In a tradition stretching back to 1874, these individuals are elected annually by the AAAS Council for their extraordinary achievements leading to the advancement of science. Fellows must have been AAAS members for …

Cytometry Shared Resource Lab expands capabilities with new instrument

Donna Huber on January 20, 2022

Julie Nelson, CSRL manager, is available to train users on the newly acquire CYTEK Aurora flow cytometer. (photo credit: Donna Huber) With the generous financial support of The Office of Research, Cytometry Shared Resource Lab, Center for Tropical and Emerging Global Diseases, Department of Infectious Diseases, and UGA faculty members Rick Tarleton, Mark Tompkins, Chet …

Structure-activity and structure-property relationship studies of spirocyclic chromanes with antimalarial activity

Donna Huber on January 14, 2022

Malaria is a prevalent and lethal disease. The fast emergence and spread of resistance to current therapies is a major concern and the development of a novel line of therapy that could overcome, the problem of drug resistance, is imperative. Screening of a set of compounds with drug/natural product-based sub-structural motifs led to the identification …

The complete genome of Chelonus insularis reveals dynamic arrangement of genome components in parasitoid wasps that produce bracoviruses

Donna Huber on January 5, 2022

Bracoviruses (BVs) are endogenized nudiviruses in parasitoid wasps of the microgastroid complex (family Braconidae). Microgastroid wasps have coopted nudivirus genes to produce replication-defective virions that females use to transfer virulence genes to parasitized hosts. The microgastroid complex further consists of six subfamilies and ∼50,000 species but current understanding of BV gene inventories and organization primarily …

Antimalarial Natural Products

Donna Huber on January 1, 2022

Natural products have made a crucial and unique contribution to human health, and this is especially true in the case of malaria, where the natural products quinine and artemisinin and their derivatives and analogues, have saved millions of lives. The need for new drugs to treat malaria is still urgent, since the most dangerous malaria …