Medicine & Health

Innovative researcher and distinguished professor George M. Whitesides, Ph.D., will speak on revolutionary ideas in the field of chemistry about the origin of life at 11 a.m. Wednesday, Feb. 6, in Graham Chapel as part of the Assembly Series. His talk, “Questions about Questions about the Origin of Life,” is the annual Ferguson Science Lecture […]

Looking back over the recent past, the advances in biomedicine seem astonishing. The birth of the first “test tube baby” 30 years ago, for example, was viewed as exotic and, to some, scary. Now, in vitro fertilization is commonplace. And yet, justifiable ethical concerns surround the human outcomes of these medical breakthroughs. Leon Kass, M.D., […]

Increasing levels of a protein that helps the brain use cholesterol may slow the development of Alzheimer’s disease changes in the brain, according to researchers studying a mouse model of the disease at the School of Medicine.

John Lasala and Ralph Damiano Jr. work together on the first surgery in the PARTNER trial. A 78-year-old St. Louis woman was the first patient in this region to receive an experimental device to replace her defective aortic valve without opening the chest wall or using a heart-lung machine. This procedure was performed by Washington University heart specialists at Barnes-Jewish Hospital on Jan. 15.

Overweight people who lose a moderate amount of weight get an immediate benefit in the form of better heart health, according to a study conducted at the School of Medicine. And the heart improvements happen whether that weight is shed by eating less or exercising more.

*T. gondii* imaged just after reproduction inside a host cell. (Photo by Wandy Beatty.)One of the most common human parasites, Toxoplasma gondii, uses a hormone lifted from the plant world to decide when to increase its numbers and when to remain dormant, researchers at the School of Medicine have found. The scientists report this week in Nature that they successfully blocked production of the molecule, known as abscisic acid (ABA), with a plant herbicide. Low doses of the herbicide prevented fatal T. gondii infection in mice.

Scientists at the School of Medicine have used yeast cells to better understand a collection of proteins associated with the formation of actin networks, which are essential to cell movement. The cell’s ability to move is important to a broad range of biomedical concerns, including understanding how immune system cells pursue disease-causing invaders and how metastasizing cancer cells migrate from a tumor.

Scanning electron microscopy image of a filamentous bacterium from a patient with a UTIScientists at the School of Medicine have found definitive proof that some of the bacteria that plague women with urinary tract infections (UTIs) are entrenched inside human bladder cells. The finding confirms a controversial revision of scientists’ model of how bacteria cause UTIs. Previously, most researchers assumed that the bacteria responsible for infections get into the bladder but do not invade the individual cells that line the interior of the bladder.

Twenty-eight-day-old *Physcomitrella* gametophyte showing the leafy gametophores in the center and the protonemal filaments radiating outward.The complete collection of genes — the genome — of a moss has been sequenced, providing scientists an important evolutionary link between single-celled algae and flowering plants. Just as the sequencing of animal genomes has helped scientists understand human genomic history, the sequencing of plant genomes will shed light on the evolution of the plant kingdom, according to Ralph S. Quatrano, Ph.D., the Spencer T. Olin Professor of Biology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis and the corresponding author of the paper.

WolffSt. Louis businesswoman and philanthropist Edith L. Wolff has made a commitment of $20 million to support biomedical research at the School of Medicine. The funds will establish the Alan A. and Edith L. Wolff Institute, which will support biomedical research projects that lead to the prevention, treatment and cure of disease.