… As part of a study funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Bradley Moore, a professor of marine biology, marine chemistry and geochemistry at Scripps Oceanography, worked to determine how domoic acid is produced with the hope of creating a predictive model. Now, a team of researchers from SIO, La Jolla’s J. Craig Venter Institute and other organizations appear to have done it. In September, the group published a study on predicting harmful algae blooms that contain high levels of domoic acid by tracking a single gene that serves like a canary in a coal mine — an early detector of danger. The study provides new insights into the mechanisms that drive harmful blooms and offers potential ways to forecast and mitigate their effects.