Lunch on the Coast - Coastal Waters: A Microbial Smorgasbord

Tuesday, July 13, 2021 noon

A Lunch on the Coast virtual series talk brought to you by UCF Coastal and UCF College of Sciences.

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Speaker: Melanie Beazley, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Chemistry

Using viral and microbial source biomarkers for tracking contaminants in wastewater and surface waters

Protection of our coastal waters from pollution is critical to maintaining healthy habitats for humans and aquatic organisms. This talk highlights methods for identifying sources of water contamination using analytical and DNA/RNA biomarker techniques. Assessing the contamination sources of water bodies is important for developing effective mitigation strategies to protect and clean up these natural systems. One of the ways researchers achieve this is identifying DNA and RNA indicators in the water. These genetic markers reveal the types of contaminants coming from urban and agricultural runoff, along with leaky septic systems, that have impaired the water quality of surface and coastal waters. Viral RNA biomarkers, for instance, contain signatures of human disease such as SARS-CoV-2 and other viruses and pathogens.

Speaker Biography:

Dr. Melanie J. Beazley is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry and the National Center for Integrated Coastal Research at the University of Central Florida. Her research interests center on the fate and transport of contaminants in the environment. She studies both terrestrial and marine systems in order to understand how contaminants affect not only the biogeochemistry of an ecosystem but also the microbial ecology. Contaminants studied include heavy metals, hydrocarbons, fertilizers/pesticides, emerging contaminants, human and animal waste, and excess nutrients. Research activities include the study of phosphorus cycling in surface waters and agricultural systems, the impacts of pharmaceuticals and other emerging contaminants on Florida coastal and freshwater ecosystems, the effects of oil spills on coastal marshes, and using microbial source tracking to determine contaminant sources to local waters. She couples both chemical analytical techniques/instrumentation with microbiological methods (isolation, PCR, RT-PCR, high throughput sequencing) to study the effects of contaminants on terrestrial and coastal ecosystems.

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