The University of Florida (UF) is awarded a grant to purchase a state-of-the art solid-state semiconductor DNA sequencer for the Whitney Lab for Marine Bioscience and a new high bandwidth internet connection to the main UF campus. Situated some 90 miles from the main campus in Gainesville, the Whitney lab is a leader in utilizing marine biodiversity to address fundamental problems in biomedical science. The new equipment will allow the nine resident research labs as well as visiting scientists from around the world to utilize their existing strengths in cellular and molecular approaches to understanding neural systems and development. Researchers at Whitney utilize a variety of different animals found in local waters to exploit their favorable properties (such as the large size, optical properties, and fecundity) to address important issues in sensory biology, the neural control of rhythmic activity, circadian behavior, and embryonic development at cellular resolution. A number of pioneering molecular techniques of individual cells and total genome sequencing have been initiated by Whitney researchers.
The capacity to perform "third" generation sequencing at the interface between marine and terrestrial environments at the Whitney lab allows the ability to study organisms at the molecular level in their natural environment. As a research facility of UF, Whitney trains undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral students throughout the year, as well as REU students in the summer (for the last 26 years!). In addition, Whitney has a number of STEM programs for K-12 students in the St. Johns and Flagler county areas and a highly successful ?Evenings at Whitney? adult seminar series in our 260 seat Center for Marine Studies building that brings exciting benefits of scientific research to our local community. The high bandwith "Lambda Rail" internet connection will allow us not only to share our research data with colleagues around the world, but leverages the high performance computing capabilities located at the UF main campus in Gainesville for data analysis. More information about the Whitney Lab can be found on its website (www.whitney.ufl.edu/).
With this NSF grant, The Whitney Lab has been able to increase our multiuser molecular sequencing throughput onsite and has also increased the visibility and connectivity to other university and educational end users through the enhancements of the internet performance here in St. Augustine, FL. The first major accomplishment on this grant was the purchase, installation, and training on a high throughput semiconductor based Ion Proton DNA sequencer (Life Technologies, Inc. ) and its accompanying liquid handler robot (the Ion Chef). Marine Labs (and Field Stations) are inherently off campus and it is imperative to provide better connectivity among existing Whitney students and researchers and to the main campus in Gainesville, FL and the entire international community. This was accomplished by providing a 10x improvement in internet speed, investing in faster servers that were relocated to an environmentally regulated room with back-up generator support. We also enhanced "Polycom" video conferencing connections to the main campus (and to the rest of the internet world). This enhanced capability reduced our carbon footprint by allowing our students to attend classes on campus, and will allow research seminars here to be streamed back to campus and for us to participate in campus seminars and faculty meetings without having to drive 180 miles back and forth to Gainesville. In addition to these two major accomplishments, we acquired additional mirrored hard drive back up to archive existing genomic and confocal imaging data generated at Whitney .
