Newsroom Stories

Westbound Brookings Drive will be closed Dec. 8-Jan. 12 to accomodate sewer work for the new School of Engineering building.

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Should weather conditions create potentially hazardous travel conditions, Washington University in St. Louis will evaluate the situation and take into consideration the safety of the faculty, staff and students as well as the services that must be provided despite the inclement weather. In the unlikely event that WUSTL alters the normal work and/or class schedule, an announcement will be posted on the university’s home page (wustl.edu), and a number of media outlets also will air an announcement.

PikaardA team led by Craig Pikaard, Ph.D., WUSTL professor of biology in Arts & Sciences, has made a breakthrough in understanding the phenomenon of nucleolar dominance, the silencing of an entire parental set of ribosomal RNA genes in a hybrid plant or animal. Since the machinery involved in nucleolar dominance is some of the same machinery that can go haywire in diseases such as cancer, Pikaard and his collaborators’ research may have important implications for applied medical research. Click here for a podcast from Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News: Interview with Craig Pikaard.

Photo by Robert BostonJames T. Stueber ensures the Medical Center’s systems run smoothly

Illustration by Michaela HuntFor years, scientists have struggled to decipher the genetic instruction book that details where and when the 20,000 genes in a human cell will be turned on or off. Different genes operate in each cell type at different times, and this careful orchestration is what ultimately distinguishes a brain cell from a liver or skin cell. Now, scientists at the School of Medicine report they have developed a model of gene expression in yeast that predicts with a high degree of accuracy whether a gene will be switched on or off.

With exams beginning this week, students and health educators have planned events aimed at reducing stress and giving students a break during this busy time.

“Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan need to be top foreign policy priorities for President Barack Obama,” says Thomas Schweich, former ambassador for counternarcotics and justice reform in Afghanistan and visiting professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis. Schweich, the Special Representative for Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, is available to discuss foreign policy issues facing the next president.

The Danforth Foundation has granted the Hope Center for Neurological Disorders at the School of Medicine a $10 million endowed gift for research into a range of conditions that cause injury and impairment to the brain and central nervous system. The funds will be used to support innovative and groundbreaking new ideas for research with clear potential to improve diagnosis and treatment of patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Parkinson’s disease, stroke, Huntington’s disease, multiple sclerosis, cerebral palsy and other disorders.

Pear-shaped people who carry weight in the thighs and backside have been told for years they are at lower risk for high blood pressure and heart disease than apple-shaped people who carry fat in the abdomen. But in two studies, School of Medicine researchers report that body shape isn’t the only marker of risk. Excess liver fat appears to be the key to insulin resistance, cholesterol abnormalities and other problems that contribute to diabetes and cardiovascular disease.