Tag Archives: College of Natural Sciences

Rebecca Prescott, a University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoamicrobiology student who recently received her PhD, has won a prestigious National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship award for her project, “Survival in extreme environments through cooperation: biofilms and looking for life on Mars,” under the program Broadening Participation of Groups Underrepresented in Biology. “We are interested in how cooperative behavior, through chemical communication in bacteria, may help microbes survive …

Megan Porter, biology assistant professor at the University of Hawaiʻiat Mānoa, is among 30 recipients to receive an Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) grant from the National Science Foundation. The grant provides non-tenured researchers with fellowships, partnering them with premier research centers and enhancing their ability to work at the frontiers of science and engineering. Porter’s project is titled Enhancing Interdisciplinary Graduate Studies …

Plant medicine is practiced widely across the world, however, there is concern that introduced plants could be replacing the use of native plants for medicine in various regions. It is critical to understand the potential influence of introduced plant use on native plant treatments. With hundreds of thousands of native plant treatments used by indigenous peoples worldwide that have yet …

Scientists have long wondered how single-celled organisms evolved into the multicellular animals we see today, but addressing this has only recently become possible by comparing complete genome sequences of diverse organisms. A study that included newly discovered and known species from Hawaiʻi has provided insights into the evolution of multi-cellularity in animals. Recently published research from an international team that included Associate …

Researchers from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Department of Botany have discovered hundreds of potentially new species of fungi in the deep coral ecosystem in the ʻAuʻau channel off Maui, Hawaiʻi. Mesophotic coral ecosystems (MCE) are generally found at depths between 130–500 feet and possess abundant plant (algal) life as well as new fish species. The mysteries of these reefs are only recently being revealed through technological advances …