Research

By Jim Raper

Biologist Follows Trail Of Ancient DNA
Alex Greenwood had a busy fall of 2008 because of his research into the disease-related extinction of island-bound rats 100 years ago and related research into the wooly mammoth, which became extinct 10,000 years ago.

The assistant professor of biological sciences, who is known for his research with ancient DNA, was a source for an Associated Press story distributed internationally in November. It noted his expertise in exploiting DNA retrieved from preserved bits of long dead animals and quoted his assessment of the recent work of other scientists, who studied DNA from mammoth hair that was found frozen in the Siberian permafrost.

Earlier in November, Greenwood was featured in another AP story about his research, again utilizing ancient DNA techniques, that shows disease was responsible for the extinction of rats native to Christmas Island in the late 19th and early 20th century. The findings were the first to demonstrate that disease can lead to the extinction of a mammal.

ODU Launches Center For Accelerator Science
Old Dominion has established a Center for Accelerator Science that will tap into the rapid growth of particle accelerator technologies for atom-smashing experiments, as well as for materials processing, medical imaging and radiation therapies against cancer. The center will receive personnel and funding support from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Newport News.

The center will train the next generation of accelerator and light-source scientists and engineers. It also promises to bring more research funding to ODU and more high-technology economic development to southeastern Virginia.

Chris Platsoucas, the dean of ODU’s College of Sciences, noted that the Jefferson Lab will participate in the design of a so-called “4th generation light source” facility that is expected to be built by the DOE somewhere in the Southeast. This facility, which is projected to cost upwards of $1 billion and produce the most brilliant light yet for laser and other applications in research, industry and medicine, will employ technologies already in use at Jefferson Lab.

Two years ago, ODU launched an accelerator physics instructional program with the help of Jefferson Lab. The new center will strengthen ODU’s position as one of a handful of universities that offer graduate programs in accelerator physics.

Tiny Protists May Hold Clues About Climate Change
Oceanographer Alex Bochdansky has received a $540,000 grant from the National Science Foundation for a three-year study of microbes that live in the deep oceans and how these tiny creatures may play a role in the oceans’ reaction to climate change.

Eukaryotic microbes – also called protists – of the deep-sea water column, most of which are flagellates that feed on bacteria, are important to the study of the carbon cycle. But they have resisted study because they live so far below the surface, and because their activities and very existence may be severely impacted if they are hauled up three or four miles onto a research vessel.

To counter this, Bochdansky and his colleagues at the Royal Netherlands Institute of Sea Research have designed and built a pressure culture system that allows them to incubate deep-sea samples and then monitor the microbes at the same pressure and temperature that they encounter in nature.

“Our main hypothesis is that the abundance and taxonomic composition of protists serve as sensitive indicators of the strength and type – particulate or dissolved – of input of organic carbon into the deep ocean system,” said the ODU assistant professor of ocean, earth and atmospheric sciences.