The University of Cincinnati's Department of Biological Sciences will receive a significant boost from the
National Institutes of Health this month via the Institute's Research Projects Grant (R01), which provides support for health-related research and development.
UC will receive $1.92 million over five years for their research into facial abnormalities — ranging from cleft palate to heifacial microsomia — using genome-wide mapping. With the ability to zero in on the precise region of the genome, researchers will be able to identify the mutations within them that may be causing the facial asymmetries.
In additional to the R01 grant, UC biology researcher Joshua Gross will receive nearly $520,000 over three years from the
National Science Foundation to uncover an explanation of pigmentation loss in cave animals. This research, he hopes, could lead to an explanation for such loss in humans as well.
Both projects will use a
Mexican cave-dwelling fish as their primary study subject. Unlike their surface-dwelling relative, these cave-dwellers have craniofacial distortions similar to those we see in humans.
"One of our most surprising discoveries is that there’s actually a genetic basis for that asymmetry," Gross says, referring to the facial asymmetries seen in the cavefish. "Some changes in the genome have resulted in one side of the face developing differently from the other side of the face. Because this process occurs so often, cavefish are a powerful natural model system for learning about this fundamental biological phenomenon of craniofacial symmetry.”
Other members of the team include doctoral candidate Bethany Stahl as well as doctoral students Brian Carlson and Amanda Powers. Both projects should be underway by the end of March.
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