Maria Valadez Ingersoll, a PhD student in the Gilmore and Davies labs, was recently awarded the BU Genome Science Institute (GSI) Research Symposium Grand Prize for presenting her current research. The GSI Research Symposium is an interdisciplinary event emphasizing research in Genetics and Genomics.
This award provides Maria $10,000 to be used at the BU SM core facilities for her next genomics experiment. Maria’s dissertation uses multi-omic genomic and proteomic techniques to uncover complexities and tradeoffs between immunity and symbiosis in cnidarians.
At the GSI Symposium, Maria presented her project on Single-Cell RNA sequencing in the stony coral Oculina arbuscula. This project characterizes the transcriptomic profiles of cells from O. arbuscula with and without intracellular facultatively symbiotic algae. This work reveals the compartmentalization of immune system suppression in specific gastrodermal cells in symbiosis, which likely limits symbiosis tradeoffs by dampening immunity in algal hosting cells while still maintaining general organismal immunity. Watch Maria’s GSI talk here (starting at minute 49)!
Congratulations, Maria!