FSML: Improvements at the Kewalo Marine Laboratory

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The University of Hawaii is awarded a grant to provide basic instrumentation to the Kewalo Marine Laboratory that will allow and enhance the ability to use molecular techniques in its research and training programs in cellular, developmental, evolutionary, and environmental biology. The instruments include a refrigerated table top centrifuge, a spectrophotometer capable of quantifying small volumes of nucleic acid, a digital gel documentation system capable of detecting chemiluminesence signals required for Western, Northern and Southern blotting, a quartz pipette puller, a ballistic gene gun, a microplate reader, and a microtome capable of cutting semi-thin plastic sections. Marine laboratories provide unprecedented access to a diverse array of research opportunities unavailable at most research universities. At the Kewalo Marine Laboratory, uniquely situated adjacent to living coral reefs near downtown Honolulu, NSF-funded researchers and their trainees use modern cellular and molecular approaches to investigate a wide variety of basic biological phenomena utilizing a full range of marine organisms, including mollusks, annelids, acoel flatworms, nemerteans, polyclad flatworms, sipunculids, crustaceans, chaetognaths, kinorhynchs, placozoans, ctenophores, sea anemones and local scleractinian corals. Each of these systems has its own unique set of handling issues, optical properties, and learning opportunities. Research at the Kewalo Marine Lab runs the gamut of studies on the evolution of body plan diversity, life history evolution, regeneration, and from symbiosis to investigations of the effects of biofilms and environmental stressors on developing embryos and larvae. The instruments will facilitate the research on local Hawaiian fauna by resident scientists at the Kewalo Marine Laboratory, their diverse undergraduate and graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, visiting scientists, and training programs that reach out to under-represented Pacific Islander students and high school teachers. Further information about Kewalo Marine Laboratory may be found at http://www.kewalo.hawaii.edu/.