Julian Lab: Prospective Students

Prospective Graduate Students: Please contact me by email (the sooner the better) if you are considering applying to the Zoology graduate program to work in my lab. Click here for lots of procedural information about applying to the Zoology Graduate Program at UF.

Prospective Undergraduate Students: We generally have 6-9 undergraduate students conducting research in our lab during a semester. Some of these students assist our graduate students, but most students (primarily those who have already spent some time in our lab and have acquired the necessary experience) conduct their own research projects. Each student usually comes to the lab for 12 or more hours per week, and many get academic credit for their research (for example, as ZOO 4905). Our students come from a variety of majors, including Zoology, Biology, IDS Biology, IDS Neurobiology, Microbiology & Cell Science, and Food Science & Nutrition. Contact me by email if you're interested in participating in research in our lab.

Our Laboratory Research page has background and general information about some of the research projects in our lab. If you think you might like that kind of research, then read below to learn more about some of the specific projects that we plan to start up (or continue) in the next few years.

1. Adaptations to the sulfide biome. Almost 30 years ago, Fenchel and Riedl proposed that a "thiobiome" exists in coastal locations worldwide. Remarkably, these habitats (such as salt marshes, mudlfats and mangroves) and the animals within them have yet to be adequately described. Since these environments are characterized by hypoxia (low oxygen availability) and the presence of the metabolic toxin hydrogen sulfide (and frequently other toxins, such as heavy metals), each of these animals is likely to have many remarkable physiological adaptations.

2. Gene induction and suppression by hypoxia and sulfide in invertebrates. In the last several years, hypoxia inducible factors (HIFs) in mammalian cells have become recognized as central to many important signaling pathways and as key regulatory factors in gene expression. However, while HIFs are likely at least equally important in invertebrates, they are barely understood. Furthermore, while it seems likely that sulfide-adapted animals will have an analogous mechanism for responding to sulfide exposure, such factors have not yet been investigated. We have begun looking at these pathways using the nematode C. elegans. This little worm may not be sulfide-adapted, and it may not be very tolerant of anaerobiosis, but you can really learn to love it despite these character flaws. This work is mostly laboratory-based, and relies heavily on molecular biology.

3. Biomedical sulfide studies. We have been developing cell culture and invertebrate models for studying the effects of sulfide toxicity in humans. With this system, we'll use biochemical and molecular biology tools to study the long-term effects of low sulfide concentrations both in marine invertebrates and in mammalian glial and neuronal cell culture.

4. Stress Proteins as Indicators of Ecosystem Health. Estuary biota are typically subjected to a wide variety of stressors, including variation in salinity, eutrophication, modification of habitats, over-harvest, and contaminants. The effects of these stressors on estuarine ecosystems are notoriously difficult to detect because of confounding effects of multiple stressors and causative pathways. At UF, we are testing whether the measurement of certain intracellular "stress proteins" may be useful as biomarkers of exposure and toxicity for environmental monitoring.

5. Studies of deep-sea invertebrates from the hydrothermal vents and hydrocarbon seeps. These will be collaborative studies, primarily with Dr. Charles Fisher at Pennsylvania State University . Check back here later for more information on these projects.

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