UTA student honored for coral reef, jellyfish research
A doctoral student at The University of Texas at Arlington recently earned two awards for his research about coral reefs.
Bradford Dimos, a third-year Ph.D. student in biology, received the awards at the annual meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB), held in Austin earlier this year.
The first was the Zander Fodor Student Research Award, which goes to students whose research grants are scored among the top five each year. Dimos’ project uses a species of jellyfish, Cassiopea xamachana, also known as the upside-down jellyfish, to understand reef-building corals’ ability to adapt to climate change.
The second was the Best Student Talk Award in the Division of Ecoimmunology and Disease Ecology for his presentation, titled “Differential Disease Susceptibility Between Closely Related Coral Species is Due to Regulation of Mitochondrial Genes.” The project’s goal is to use gene sequencing to understand why certain species of corals become diseased while others do not.
“Brad is a very creative and hard-working student,” said Laura Mydlarz, associate dean of science, professor of biology and Dimos’ faculty mentor. “I am thrilled he is being recognized with these two awards from SICB, as it is a testament to the high quality of research he’s doing."
In the gene-sequencing project, Dimos and his team members are examining the transmission of white plague coral disease between two closely related species of coral, Orbicella faveolata and Montastrea cavernosa. White plague causes rapid tissue loss in corals, which leaves their white skeletons exposed to the elements. The disease can lead to partial or complete colony mortality and is believed to be responsible for the destruction of up to 80% of coral reefs in the Caribbean.
Last June, Dimos was lead author of a paper in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B about the identification of a mitochondrial unfolded protein response in an endangered coral species. Dimos and his co-authors identified a gene that acts as a “master regulator” that unlocks hundreds of other genes that are important for immunity in corals.
“We’ve uncovered a single target that has a broad scope of impact,” Dimos said. “This is a huge step forward in making any interventions to preserve coral more efficiently.”
Dimos was also lead author of another paper, titled “Responding to Threats Both Foreign and Domestic: NOD-like Receptors in Corals,” published in the October 2019 edition of the journal Integrative and Comparative Biology. The project studied the role played by NOD-like receptors in how reef-building corals respond to the twin threats of coral diseases and increasing water temperatures.
“I enjoy the research, because the way that organisms work is like a puzzle,” Dimos said. “As a biologist, you have the chance to solve part of the puzzle, which is really exciting.”
- Written by Greg Pederson, College of Science