Science & Technology

The coconut has been popular in lore and on palates for centuries, yet little is known about the history of this palm’s domestication and dispersal around the world. Now, Kenneth M. Olsen, Ph.D., assistant professor of biology in Arts & Sciences, is embarking on the task of understanding the plant’s history by exploring the genetics of the coconut.

Caves are in trouble, at least in St. Louis County, Missouri, says Robert Criss, Ph.D., professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, co-author of a scholarly paper that documents, archives and describes the status of all the known 127 caves found in the 508 square mile county.

Image courtesy of NASAThe Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) taking pictures of Mars.A software program developed by researchers at Washington University in St. Louis is allowing access to planetary data and early images from the most powerful spectral camera ever sent to Mars. The information is now available on NASA’s online planetary data archive.

The next generation of consumers will be the true beneficiaries of the promise of genomics. But how will they make informed choices in a world resplendent with genomics products, including tools to predict disease and the engineered drugs to treat those diseases? The answer, says Sarah C.R. Elgin, Ph.D., WUSTL professor of biology in Arts & Sciences, is more genetics and genomics at every level of American education.

NASA/JPL-Caltech/E.Churchwell (U. of WisconsinThe nebula RCW49 is a nursery for newborn stars and exists in circumstellar space, where chemistry is done for the very first time.Picture a cool place, teeming with a multitude of hot bodies twirling about in rapidly changing formations of singles and couples, partners and groups, constantly dissolving and reforming. If you were thinking of the dance floor in a modern nightclub, think again. It’s a description of the shells around dying stars, the place where newly formed elements make compounds and life takes off, said Katharina Lodders, Ph.D., research associate professor of earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.

Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have discovered through genetic analyses a metabolic pathway in bacteria comprised of just three genes, all known to be players in metabolism. This pathway was previously shown to be involved in synthesizing modified membrane lipids but data from Petra Levin’s lab indicate that it also has a major role in cell division. This is the first identification of a pathway responsible for regulating bacterial cell size.

Jeffrey MarlowJeffrey J. Marlow, a senior in Arts & Sciences, is one of 20 students nationwide named to the 2007 All-USA College Academic First Team, USA Today’s recognition program for outstanding undergraduates. Two other Washington University students were named to the third team and one student received honorable mention, resulting in WUSTL tying with the University of Alabama for the most students selected in the newspaper’s competition.

Ramanath Cowsik, Ph.D., one of the world’s pre-eminent astrophysicists, has been named director of the McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. Cowsik, professor of physics in Arts & Sciences at Washington University, will take over as director July 1. He succeeds Roger J. Phillips, Ph.D., professor of earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences, who is stepping down after seven years as director.

Plants on extrasolar planets resembling Earth could be as black as these eggplants.Washington University biology and chemistry professor Robert Blankenship and his colleagues are seeking clues to life on extrasolar planets by studying various biosignatures found in the light spectrum leaking out to Earth. They are speculating on what kind of photosynthesis might occur on such planets and what the extrasolar plants might look like.

Joe Angeles/WUSTL PhotoErik Trinkaus, WUSTL professor of anthropology in Arts & Sciences, holding a Neandertal skull, says the evidence is very convincing that Neandertals and early humans mixed.For nearly a century, anthropologists have been debating the relationship of Neandertals to modern humans. Central to the debate is whether Neandertals contributed directly or indirectly to the ancestry of the early modern humans that succeeded them. As this discussion has intensified in the past decades, it has become the central research focus of Erik Trinkaus, Ph.D., professor of anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis. Trinkaus has examined the earliest modern humans in Europe, including specimens in Romania, Czech Republic and France. Those specimens, in Trinkaus’ opinion, have shown obvious Neandertal ancestry.