Category: Genetics and Genomics

With over 700,000 pounds produced and $2.3 million in farm sales, strawberries are an important crop for New Hampshire farmers. But improving the cultivated strawberry through breeding is particularly challenging. The cultivated strawberries has four times as many chromosome sets as humans, animals and most other crops, which significantly increases its genomic complexity. Research to untangle the plant's genetic structure will enable scientists to more quickly and effectively develop cultivated strawberry varieties that help New England farmers be more resilient and successful.

Sponges in coral reefs are among the earliest animals on the planet. Research from UNH examines coral reef ecosystems with a novel approach to understanding the complex evolution of sponges and the microbes that live in symbiosis with them.

Introduced to the Northeast in the 1870s and grown widely as a backyard and garden plant throughout the region for nearly 150 years, the kiwiberry (Actinidia arguta) shows great potential for commercial success. The plant is a woody perennial climbing vine that produces clusters of small, grape-sized kiwi-like fruit. Due to high levels of carotenoids and anthocyanins, the nutritious flesh of a kiwiberry can assume a wide range of attractive colors, from dark greens to yellows to reds to purples. The fruit is high in vitamin C and one of the richest. sources of lutein (an antioxidant) in commonly consumed fruits.

In a first-of-its-kind study, UNH researchers found that using an existing drug compound in a new way, known as drug repurposing, could be successful in blocking the activity of a key enzyme of the coronavirus, or SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19.

Building on a decades-long legacy of UNH research into cancer in the softshell clam (Mya arenaria), a recent paper by a team of UNH researchers sheds new light on how apoptosis evolved in invertebrates. Their research overturns a longstanding idea in the science of apoptosis by finding that the genetic repertoire that the clam uses for its apoptosis pathway is more similar to humans than to other invertebrates that have been studied.

The University of New Hampshire's uniquely designed lab has completed more than one million tests to detect and monitor the coronavirus. The cutting-edge lab not only performs specifically designed self-swab tests for students, faculty and staff but also plays an important testing role to help provide a safe environment for the greater community by processing tests for more than 125 other groups, including secondary schools, long term-care facilities and other colleges in the state.