Author: Diana Lutz

A colony of 28 day-old *Physcomitrella patens* grown in laboratory culture showing the green, leafy shoots in the center, with fine, radiating protonemal filaments growing outward.Washington University in St. Louis will be involved directly with sequencing the entire genome of the moss, Physcomitrella patens, at the Joint Genome Institute (JGI) in Walnut Creek, Calif. The Community Sequencing Program at the United States Department of Energy chose a proposal submitted by Ralph S. Quatrano, Ph.D., Spencer T. Olin Professor and Washington University biology department chair, and Brent Mishler, Ph.D., professor of integrative biology and director of the Jepson Herbaria at the University of California, Berkeley, to sequence the plant’s DNA.

He could have named her “Lucky.” But when T.J. Shelton’s second child came into this world, he and his wife decided to name their daughter Micaela Marie. This, despite the fact that she was born on the first day of the seventh month (July), at 7 p.m. and weighed 7 pounds, 7 ounces. With all […]

“The overall feeling from everyone is, ‘Wow, what a great building!'” says department Chair Raymond Arvidson. “We’re very grateful for it.”

WUSTL researchers are investigating how to infuse grains with folate typically found in green vegetables such as broccoli.A team of researchers led by Karel Schubert, Ph.D., affiliate research biology professor in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, recently achieved a breakthrough to enhance levels of folate, a vitamin essential to human and animal health, in the model plant Arabidopsis.

David Kilper / WUSTL PhotoBottled water or tap? A WUSTL environmental engineer specializing in aquatic chemistry sees no difference between the two in terms of health.Paying extra for bottled water? You may be wasting your money, says an expert in aquatic chemistry. Daniel Giammar, Ph.D., a faculty member in the Environmental Engineering Science Program at Washington University in St. Louis, says that tap water is just as safe to drink as bottled water. He also says that the pricey bottled water you value so highly might well be nothing more than repackaged tap water. “The tap water we drink meets very strict standards that are designed to protect our health,” Giammar says. “These are developed over many years of study and they all include fairly large factors of safety. Any differences between tap and bottled water, in terms of health, are negligible.”

Joe Angeles / WUSTL PhotoA new book co-authored by a memory researcher at Washington University in St. Louis is one-stop shopping for all the questions we have about memory and how serious our lapses might be as we grow older. Mark A. McDaniel, Ph.D., professor of psychology in Arts & Sciences at WUSTL, says his book, Memory Fitness: A Guide for Successful Aging, relies on many rigorous academic studies but is written for the lay person. “Our mission is to give the general public a good idea of what they can reasonably expect from their memory capabilities as they age,” says McDaniel about the book he co-authored with Gilles O. Einstein, Ph.D., professor and chair of the psychology department at Furman University. “It also outlines some reasonable expectations about things people can do to perhaps increase their memory performances.”

She was awarded the Wilbur Lucius Cross Medal, the Yale University Graduate School’s highest honor, at its commencement ceremonies.

Raven has been appointed to the 12-member President’s Committee on the National Medal of Science by President George W. Bush.

It’s a bug-eat-bug world found in this seemingly innocuous, surprisingly revealing, ecosystem.If you think your place is a dump, try living in a tree hole: a dark flooded crevice with years of accumulated decomposing leaves and bugs, infested with bacteria, other microbes, and crawling with insect larvae. A biologist at Washington University in St. Louis has studied the ecosystem of the tree hole and the impact that three factors — predation, resources and disturbance — have on species diversity.

Her methods for detecting damage in civil structures has proven vital in long-span bridges, which are an important aspect of our nation’s transportation network.