Science & Technology

Kara Andres, a Living Earth Collaborative postdoctoral researcher, used eDNA to follow invisible trails of genetic information from fish. While her original study probed the Great Lakes, her recent work is focused on microbial communities in local waterways.

Researchers led by Fuzhong Zhang at the McKelvey School of Engineering developed a synthetic biology tool to comprehensively reveal gene regulatory networks in E. coli.

A study from biologist Elizabeth Mallott in Arts & Sciences highlights a critical development window during which racial differences in the gut microbiome emerge. Early social and environmental exposures can have large and lasting effects on child development and adult health.

New research from Washington University in St. Louis shows that testosterone — which naturally triggers male electric fish to broadcast slightly different signals during the breeding season — also alters a system in the fish’s brain that enables the fish to ignore its own signal. The study by biologists Matasaburo Fukutomi and Bruce Carlson in Arts & Sciences is published in Current Biology.

Biologist Stan Braude in Arts & Sciences was part of a team that analyzed CT scans of the heads of more than 300 mammals to determine whether certain structures in the nasal cavity play a pivotal role in body temperature maintenance.

Most bird families have adapted to changes in ambient temperature by changing both their bodies and their bills simultaneously, according to biologist Justin Baldwin in Arts & Sciences, first author of a new study in Nature Communications.

For the first time, a study by researchers including biologist Susanne Renner in Arts & Sciences helps solve the mystery of the timing of falling leaves in autumn by revealing the pivotal role of the summer solstice.

Barbara A. Schaal, the Mary-Dell Chilton Distinguished Professor in the Department of Biology in Arts & Sciences, was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in May. Schaal was among the first scientists to use molecular biology-based approaches to understand evolutionary processes in plants.

Biologist Matthew Austin in Arts & Sciences published a study in the American Journal of Botany that describes changes to the flowering time and other important life cycle events in Leavenworthia species, a group of small flowering plants found in glades in Missouri.

As a biology faculty member, Professor Emerita Ursula Goodenough invited non-science majors to understand and reflect on the history of life on Earth. The second edition of her book, The Sacred Depths of Nature: How Life Has Emerged and Evolved, brings the wondrous saga to a new audience.