Science & Technology

Washington University scientists have documented 10 different bat species in our area, including several threatened and endangered bats.

Red colobus monkeys are the most threatened group of African monkeys. With a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), a Washington University team will model viral transmission dynamics among red colobus monkeys and their human neighbors near Kibale National Park, Uganda.

Biologist Himadri Pakrasi in Arts & Sciences, who studies how cyanobacteria contribute to the chemistry of life, will lead a $5 million effort to develop technology to convert atmospheric nitrogen into fertilizer. Yinjie Tang and Yixin Chen at the McKelvey School of Engineering are co-investigators on the project.

Researchers at the McKelvey School of Engineering have long sought to understand the power of locusts’ sensing, computing and locomotory capabilities.

Petra Levin, a professor of biology in Arts & Sciences, was installed as a George William and Irene Koechig Freiberg Professor of Biology in a Sept. 19 ceremony held in Holmes Lounge. Her installation address was titled “The Environment Matters.”

New research from Washington University in St. Louis and the Georgia Institute of Technology directly measures the long-term survival of lizards in the wild, providing a more complete explanation of how evolution plays out among species that live side-by-side.

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.