Science & Technology

Many North American migratory birds are shrinking in size as temperatures have warmed over the past 40 years. But those with very big brains, relative to their body size, did not shrink as much as smaller-brained birds, according to biologists in Arts & Sciences. The study in Ecology Letters is the first to identify a direct link between cognition and animal response to human-made climate change.

A five-year nearly $2 million project led by biologist Erik Herzog in Arts & Sciences will use machine learning and other tools to improve understanding of how the brain is organized as a network of synchronized circadian cells.

A new study co-authored by biologist Jonathan Myers in Arts & Sciences provides key insights into how and why tree populations migrate in response to climate change. The research was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Douglas Chalker, professor of biology in Arts & Sciences, received a five-year $660,281 collaborative award from the National Institutes of Health to expand hands-on science efforts in K-12 classrooms.

Research from the lab of Barani Raman finds in locusts that the presence of smell can be determined by simply adding and subtracting the presence of certain neurons.

Work from the lab of Rohit Pappu at the McKelvey School of Engineering and colleagues at St. Jude continues to reveal novel findings about phase separation, the process cells use for organization.

Scientists at Washington University in St. Louis described for the first time the structure of a bifunctional protein, called CcsBA, that transports heme and attaches it to cytochromes. The study led by Robert Kranz, professor of biology in Arts & Sciences, captured two conformational states of CcsBA, a bacterial and chloroplast protein, allowing researchers to characterize the enzyme mechanism.

A collaboration between Washington University in St. Louis, Université de Montréal and McGill University discovers a new importance of biomolecular condensates.

Richard Vierstra, the George and Charmaine Mallinckrodt Professor of Biology in Arts & Sciences, received a $62,707 supplemental grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in support of his phytochrome research.

Petra Levin, professor of biology in Arts & Sciences, received an $84,616 equipment supplement from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to purchase a new chromatography system.