Justin Miller-Schulze and Kimberly Mulligan Receive R15 AREA Grant

R15 Grant

Professors Justin Miller-Schulze and Kimberly Mulligan have been awarded a three-year, $300,000 grant (direct cost) from the National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences (branch of the National Institutes of Health), through their R15 Academic Research Enhancement Award (AREA) program to establish a model for assessing the impact of air pollution on neurodevelopmental disorders.

Air pollution is an emerging environmental risk factor for neurodevelopmental disorders. Miller-Schulze and Mulligan aim to establish the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, as a model for neurotoxicity profiling of air pollution using a specific source of air pollution: diesel exhaust. In collaboration with the Measurement and Assessment and Research Section of the Mobile Source Laboratory Division of the California Air Resources Board, Profs. Miller-Schulze and Mulligan, and their students, will expose Drosophila melanogaster to filtered and unfiltered diesel exhaust and assess the impact of this exposure on both adult courtship behavior and locomotor activity as well as the metabolomic chemical profile. Subsequent to these initial experiments, the Miller-Schulze and Mulligan groups will assess the impact of gene-environment impacts using Drosophila with specific genetic mutations.