Author: Ken Duenke

Mice with chronic herpes virus infections can better resist the bacterium that causes plague and a bacterium that causes one kind of food poisoning, researchers report in this week’s Nature. Scientists at the School of Medicine attributed the surprising finding to changes in the immune system triggered by the long-term presence of a latent herpes virus infection.

The first person in her family to pursue a university degree, Heike Polster has come a long way from the spunky, inquisitive girl in Bergrheinfeld, Germany, who wanted most of all “to become a dentist’s wife,” she says. Photo by David Kilper German-born Heike Polster discusses the novel “Austerlitz” by W.G. Sebald, whose work she […]

Robert J. Hayashi, M.D., has been named director of the Division of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology in the Department of Pediatrics at Washington University School of Medicine. A member of the faculty at the School of Medicine since 1992, Hayashi is an associate professor of pediatrics.

Photo by Kevin Lowder(From left) Shaina Goodman, a junior in Women and Gender Studies; Patricia Engel, a junior in biology; and Jamie Yasgur, a sophomore in Women and Gender Studies, all in Arts & Sciences, perform “Close.Closer.Closed” at the 2007 Undergraduate Research Symposium April 28 in the Athletic Complex.

When repairing severed or damaged motor nerves with a donor nerve graft, surgeons have traditionally used a sensory nerve from another area of the patient’s body. However, these patients often do not fully regain function in the injured area. But now a team of surgeons at the School of Medicine and Barnes-Jewish Hospital has found that repairing a motor nerve in rats with an intact motor nerve yields better results than using a sensory nerve. The research appeared in the March issue of the journal Microsurgery.

Using an innovative statistical approach, a research team from the School of Medicine and the University of California, Los Angeles, has identified two regions of DNA linked to autism. They found the suspicious DNA with a much smaller sample of people than has been used traditionally in searches for autism genes.

The School of Law will host a two-day national conference titled “Jurisgenesis 2007: New Voices on the Law” for a select group of new legal scholars and their faculty mentors June 18-19.

The annual “MFA Thesis Exhibition” in the Kemper Art Museum May 11-July 16 includes approximately 60 artworks in a variety of media by 14 second-year master’s candidates in the Graduate School of Art.

Scientists at the Genome Sequencing Center were among those to decode the rhesus macaque monkey genome, which shares about 93 percent of DNA with humans.

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis report they have developed an agent that protects cells from the lethal effects of radiation, regardless of whether it is given before or after exposure. Using this agent in mice, the investigators found that the treatment helped shield rapidly dividing cells that are most vulnerable to radiation-induced death, providing proof in principle that it is possible to fend off radiation damage.