Newsroom Stories

More than 100 School of Medicine students have been volunteering to help local health departments perform case investigations and contact tracing, essential public health strategies to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus.

Laurie Maffly-Kipp, the Archer Alexander Distinguished Professor in the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis, has been appointed interim dean of the Graduate School and vice provost for graduate education, effective July 1.

A new technique developed in the lab of Matthew Lew at the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis measures the orientation of single molecules. It is enabling, for the first time, optical microscopy to reveal nanoscale details about the structures of these problematic proteins.

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have received a $3.7 million grant to investigate the link between manganese and cognitive problems by studying welders whose work exposes them to the metal.

“This new study shows that the extinction crisis is even worse than realized,” said Jonathan Losos, the William H. Danforth Distinguished University Professor and professor of biology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis and director of the Living Earth Collaborative.

Research from the McKelvey School of Engineering shows that energy constraints on a system, coupled with an intrinsic property of systems, push silicon neurons to create a dynamic, at-a-distance communication that is more robust and efficient than traditional computer processors. And it may teach us something about biological brains.

Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have found that genes that confer the power to destroy tetracyclines are widespread in bacteria that live in the soil and on people.

The U.S. sports blackout because of the pandemic has left at least a $12 billion crater in the national economy. And even if stadiums and arenas light up anew soon, they won’t look the same. A sports business expert from the Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis doesn’t expect the NBA, NHL and Major League Baseball to welcome fans if/when they return in 2020, for example.

The Dixit lab at Washington University in St. Louis, which in a study published in 2018 found molecular brakemen that keep the Arabidopsis Fragile Fiber 1 (FRA1) motor protein in check, uncovered in continuing research that FRA1 cinches its track in place through cellulose synthase-microtubule uncoupling proteins.

Suppression of the spread of COVID-19 is an attainable goal, and it can be done through strategies that ease social distancing guidelines, suggests a new model developed by researchers at Washington University in St. Louis and the Brookings Institution.