Category Archives: Biology

Department evolves with incoming faculty, building renovation by Meghan Ochs | Apr 13 2017 | 04/13/17 1:31am Over the past several years, the biology department has experienced a variety of changes, including the arrival of new faculty and construction of a building to house the expanding faculty group and to facilitate research. This fall, three new faculty members join the department, specializing in concentrations such as evolutionary and developmental biology and neuroscience. These employments embody efforts aimed at enhancing underdeveloped sections in the department. The department enjoys strengths in the biological sub-disciplines of neuroscience and ecology and evolution, Assoc. Biology Prof. Ignacio Provencio said. These areas have been further strengthened by the hiring of junior faculty who have proven to be on steep, upward trajectories in their teaching and research missions. As the faculty body continues to expand, additional members bring advanced ways of thinking about science, as well as courses on more contemporary topics for students. When new faculty come we get new courses, and those new courses tend to offer sort of the more modern end of biology, Prof. and Chair of Biology Laura Galloway said. So now we're thinking about things like stem cells and bioinformatics in … Continue reading →

Contact: Sasha Steinberg STARKVILLE, Miss.Three Mississippi State students who conducted faculty-guided research projects throughout the current school year recently took top awards at the 10th annual MSU Biological Sciences Undergraduate Research Program Symposium. Sponsored by the universitys biological sciences department, the symposium provided 22 undergraduates the opportunity to showcase research projects they conducted during the fall 2016 and spring 2017 semesters. Three of those students, as well as their respective mentors, received special awards. First-, second- and third-place winners each garnered Downer Undergraduate Research Awards that honor Professor Emeritus Donald N. Downer of Starkville, a former longtime department head. The honorees include: FIRSTAnna C. Jackson, a senior biological sciences major from Starkville. Her project Please Do Not Feed the Animals: An Analysis of the Effect of Anthropogenic Stresses on Mating Behaviors Displayed by Sister Isles Rock Iguanas was completed under the guidance of MSU Associate Professor of Biological Sciences Mark Welch. SECONDAaron W. Albee, a sophomore microbiology major from Starkville. His project Impact of Occidiofungin on Morphological Switching in C. albicans was completed under the guidance of MSU Associate Professor of Biological Sciences Donna Gordon. THIRDPeter G. Kooienga, a junior microbiology major from Ocean Springs. His project OUIWING TRUUM N.G. … Continue reading →

CSUN biology professor and creator of Biology Open Online Prep Session, Cindy Malone. The online class, Biology Open Online Prep Sessions (B-OOPS), is a massive open online course (MOOC) currently being offered to several Biology 100 and 101 students along with a few 9th grade students who are giving Malone feedback on the courses effectiveness. Once it is ready, Malone plans a soft rollout of the course, offering it first to CSUN students, before opening it up to all students across the country and beyond through the Canvas.net MOOC system. Biology professor at California State University, Northridge and creator of Biology Open Online Prep Session, Cindy Malone. CSUN biology professor and creator of Biology Open Online Prep Session, Cindy Malone. The course gives students the option to control what, when and how they want to learn. B-OOPS targets students who want to expand their biology knowledge, refresh their memories about the academic material or utilize the course as a tutorial guide if they are struggling in biology. B-OOPS will be open to anyone in the world, said Malone. People who use the MOOC do not have to complete the entire course. If they want, they can just look through some … Continue reading →

From the clown fish to leopards, skin colour patterns in animals arise from microscopic interactions among coloured cells that obey equations discovered by the mathematician Alan Turing. Today, researchers at the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, and SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics report in the journal Nature that a southwestern European lizard slowly acquires its intricate adult skin colour by changing the colour of individual skin scales using an esoteric computational system invented in 1948 by another mathematician: John von Neumann. The Swiss team shows that the 3D geometry of the lizard's skin scales causes the Turing mechanism to transform into the von Neumann computing system, allowing biology-driven research to link, for the first time, the work of these two mathematical giants. A multidisciplinary team of biologists, physicists and computer scientists lead by Michel Milinkovitch, professor at the Department of Genetics and Evolution of the UNIGE Faculty of Science, Switzerland and Group Leader at the SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, realised that the brown juvenile ocellated lizard (Timon lepidus) gradually transforms its skin colour as it ages to reach an intricate adult labyrinthine pattern where each scale is either green or black. This observation is at odd with the mechanism, … Continue reading →

The idea of sleep is supposed to evoke feelings of peace, relaxation and refreshment, but when expert Mary Carskadon talks about teen sleep in school districts with early start times, she uses far less comfortable words. "Social policy clashes with what we see from the biology," said Carskadon, a professor of psychiatry and human behavior at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University. "For teens, when they have not gotten enough sleep and they have to get up too early, they are crushed in the morning." Over decades of study, Carskadon has shown that two systems that regulate sleep, circadian rhythms and sleep pressure, both change as children grow up. While they still need the same amount of sleep throughout childhood -- ideally 9 to 10 hours -- older kids naturally become inclined to go to sleep later (as their circadian rhythms skew later). That means they become biologically predisposed to sleep later, too, to fully relieve that sleep pressure -- or biological need to sleep. Yet society frequently requires that they wake early. "They are incredibly sleepy from the sleep pressure, but also they have to be at school at a time when their circadian system wants them … Continue reading →

CORPUS CHRISTI - Manuel Andres Soto is proud of his heritage. The Texas A&M University-Kingsville associate professor of biology will spoke openly about the care and loving he received from his parents and extended family and bragged about his upbringing as a tool that helped shape his destiny. Soto, called Andy, is also not afraid to brag about his humble beginnings in a South Texas Colonia in the farming community of Edroy, Texas, about 40 miles from Corpus Christi heading north on I-37. A Colonia is a community that lacks some of the most basic living necessities such as potable water and sewer systems, electricity, paved roads and safe and sanitary housing, Soto explains. But, he wasnt poor. The riches he received in that Colonia allowed him to earn bachelors and masters degrees in biology from Texas A&M University-Kingsville and later a doctorate from Gulf Coast Research Laboratory at the University of Southern Mississippi. Now, Soto tells all about his experiences in a new book titled simply, Life in a South Texas Colonia. The book also features Sotos original art depicting his experiences in the Colonia. Soto explained his book and art work at a reading and book-signing event at … Continue reading →

A mouse pancreas imaged withselective plane illumination microscopy, a technique that will be used at EMBL Barcelona. Ahlgren, Mayer & Swoger/CRG By Elisabeth PainApr. 11, 2017 , 3:45 PM BARCELONA, SPAINYou'd have to go back to the years before the economic crisis to feel so much optimism in the Spanish scientific community. In a lecture hall buzzing with excitement, the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) and the Spanish government yesterday presented a plan to open a new lab here for the study of tissues and organs. The center, EMBL's first new outpost in 18 years, will host six to eight research groups; a director has yet to be named but recruitment has begun. The announcement is welcome news to the Spanish scientific community, which has suffered from years of budget cuts and political neglect. The agreement also strengthens Barcelona's profile as one of southern Europe's premier science hubs, adds Joan Guinovart, director of the Institute for Research in Biomedicine here. Barcelona is already one of the hottest spots in biomedicine in Europe," he says. Headquartered in Heidelberg, Germany, EMBL is an international organization supported by 22 member states; it's not affiliated with the European Union. Over the decades, EMBL has … Continue reading →

Students work in an introductory biology lab in Churchill-Haines Tuesday afternoon. USD's medical biology program has been given a major donation by the family of a deceased alum, which it will use for labs, research and scholarships. Mason Dockter / The Volante USDs medical biology program is about to be the beneficiary of a huge cash infusion, courtesy of the family of an alumnus. Keith Nolop, a former Volante editor, graduated from USD in 1975 and spent decades working in pharmaceutical development. According to his obituary in the New York Times, he worked on drugs to treat cancer, asthma and allergies. In May of last year, Keith Nolop was killed in a bicycle wreck in Pacific Palisades, C.A., at the age of 63. After careful consideration, his family decided to donate several million dollars of his estateto the USD medical biology department. The total amount of the gift currently is $4 million, buttheres a possibility more will come whenKeith Nolops brother, Neil Nolop, comes to visit campus next month. Steve Brown, president and CEO of the USD Foundation, will be meeting with Neil Nolop when he visits. The gift amount that we have received to date is $4 million, and … Continue reading →

James E. Rothman, newly appointed as a Sterling Professor of Cell Biology, is one of the world's most distinguished biochemists and cell biologists. For his work on how molecular messages are transmitted inside and outside of human cells, he was awarded a Nobel Prize in 2013. A Sterling Professorship is one of the universitys highest faculty honors. Rothman helped reveal the mechanism that allows cellular compartments called vesicles to transmit information both in the interior of the cell and to the surrounding environment. The fusion of vesicles and cellular membranes, a process called exocytosis, is basic to life and occurs in organisms as diverse as yeast and humans. Exocytosis underlies physiological functions ranging from the secretion of insulin to the regulation of the brain neurotransmitters responsible for movement, perception, memory, and mood. Rothmans current research concerns the biophysics of membrane fusion and its regulation in exocytosis; the dynamics of the Golgi apparatus at super-resolution; and the use of bio-inspired design in nanotechnology. After graduating from Yale College with a degree in physics, Rothman earned a Ph.D. in biological chemistry from Harvard Medical School. He conducted postdoctoral research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before moving to the Stanford School of … Continue reading →

Nature.com Synthetic Biology Building a custom eukaryotic genome de novo Nature.com The Synthetic Yeast Project (Sc2.0) aims to create the first synthetic eukaryotic genome. It is based on synthesizing, from scratch, a reworked Saccharomyces cerevisiae genome that is optimized for genomic stability and includes various design features ... The rest is here: Synthetic Biology Building a custom eukaryotic genome de novo - Nature.com … Continue reading →