UMF professor receives $551,599 NSF grant for school and early school scholar analysis on new hormone system
FARMINGTON — College of Maine at Farmington biology professor Dr. Timothy Breton has acquired a extremely aggressive Nationwide Science Basis analysis grant for $551,599.
The three-year NSF analysis challenge will start in fall 2023 and proceed Breton’s 2021 groundbreaking work on hormone receptors when he found a brand new gene with potential biomedical and business makes use of.
Breton and his group will work intently with UMF undergraduate college students and Farmington’s Early School program. It’s going to create analysis assistant and knowledge evaluation alternatives for each Farmington college students and academics and college students from 4 Western Maine excessive colleges. Breton expects to arrange his lab and start hiring scholar analysis assistants this fall. He’ll start to attach with highschool companions in 2024.
“Professor Breton’s analysis challenge and its funding by the Nationwide Science Basis are a beneficial funding in Western Maine. This collaborative regional partnership will present hands-on analysis expertise to UMF college students and highschool college students and educators serving to them develop excessive degree, career-focused expertise within the life sciences,” stated Joseph McDonnell, UMF president.
Breton’s NSF challenge will research a household of hormone receptors discovered within the cell membrane of fish and people and the way they have an effect on replica. Understanding these modifications in fish may result in new analysis on the mind, pancreas and intestine well being and new business and therapeutic purposes.
“This Nationwide Science Basis grant is a wonderful instance of how small universities are capable of discover attention-grabbing analysis questions and leverage them into additional scholar alternatives,” stated Breton.
Undergraduate college students at Farmington could have the chance to carry paid analysis assistantships and be concerned with leading edge strategies akin to RNA Scope and RNA-Seq to have a look at receptor areas inside tissues and doc DNA change.
“Expertise with these career-based expertise is very necessary as life science industries are among the many quickest rising occupational areas in Maine,” stated Breton.
In keeping with a current report by the Bioscience Affiliation of Maine, Maine has greater than 9,500 jobs within the life science sector at practically 500 companies — development that’s outpacing all of New England, together with Massachusetts.
A necessary a part of the grant-funded challenge is the analysis alternatives it’ll create for school and highschool college students in rural Maine. The challenge is designed to supply science-minded college students with cutting-edge analysis expertise and to convey bioinformatics coaching to under-served scholar populations.
“I’m very excited concerning the potential for neighborhood impression this NSF grant presents. It exhibits that top college trainer skilled improvement may be coupled with hands-on scholar exploration of the info to interrupt boundaries related to “massive knowledge” science and develop bioinformatics schooling in rural western Maine,” stated Breton.
The analysis can be anticipated to generate databases that can present hands-on analysis expertise in computational bioinformatics to UMF and highschool contributors at Dirigo, Oxford Hills, Mt. Blue, and Skowhegan excessive colleges.
“This can be a fantastic alternative for our Early School companions from these excessive colleges. Lecturers will obtain ongoing skilled improvement, entry to college tools and actual world analysis knowledge to make use of with their college students within the classroom.,” stated Kirsten Petroska, UMF director of Early School Partnerships.
Native highschool academics concerned with the UMF Early School program will likely be educated to leverage these databases of their biology associated lessons and develop unbiased bioinformatics modules for sustainable use.
UMF is the lead establishment for the grant, which was ready with the assistance of Wissen, Inc. Breton and his group will likely be working with colleagues Drs. Casey Murray, Matthew DiMaggio and Christopher Martyniuk from the College of Florida and two worldwide collaborators Drs. Julien Hanson (College of Liège, Belgium) and Thanigai Alai Pillaiyar (College of Tübingen, Germany.)
This challenge is collectively funded by the BIO-IOS-Physiological Mechanisms and Biomechanics Program and the Established Program to Stimulate Aggressive Analysis (EPSCoR).
Breton is an affiliate professor of biology on the College of Maine at Farmington the place he teaches and conducts analysis in animal physiology and genomics. He’s the recipient of numerous extremely aggressive grants, together with from the Nationwide Science Basis, the Nationwide Institutes of Well being Maine-INBRE program and the Maine Financial Enchancment Fund to discover quite a lot of questions, starting from the genetics of native seaweed to intercourse change in fish and uncovering new hormone features.
In 2021, Dr. Breton and his UMF analysis assistant college students found a brand new gene in fish with purposes to higher perceive replica and human illness. He emphasizes actual analysis experiences for UMF college students, together with hands-on work within the molecular laboratory and knowledge evaluation.
Breton acquired a B.S. diploma in biology from Suffolk College and an M.S. and Ph.D. in zoology from the College of New Hampshire.
