Arts & Sciences

The Venus Flytrap, with its two leaf jaws that sense when an insect approaches and quickly snap shut, is one of nature’s clearest examples of biology and mechanics working together to sustain life. Four doctoral students at Washington University in St. Louis will have the opportunity to take a closer look at this intersection under a five-year, $921,040 grant.

Joseph Jez, PhD, co-director of the plant and microbial biosciences graduate program at Washington University in St. Louis, is one of 15 professors nationwide to receive a $1 million HHMI grant to bring the creativity he has shown in the lab to the undergraduate classroom. He plans to use the grant to establish a two-year program called the Biotech Explorers Pathway that will introduce entering students to both the science and business of biotechnology.

A novel antibiotic delivery system would exploit small molecules called siderophores that bacteria secrete to scavenge for iron in their environments. Each bacterium has its own system of siderophores, which it pumps across its cell membrane before releasing the iron the siderophores hold. If an antibiotic were linked to one of these scavenger molecules, it would be converted into a tiny Trojan horse that would smuggle antibiotics inside a bacterium’s cell membrane.

Figuring out how to survive on a lean-season diet of hard-to-reach ants, slugs and other bugs may have spurred the development of bigger brains and higher-level cognitive functions in the ancestors of humans and other primates, suggests research from Washington University in St. Louis.

It has generally been assumed that people with episodic amnesia experience time much differently than those with more typical memory function. However, recent research by Washington University philosopher Carl F. Craver, PhD, disputes this type of claim. “There are sets of claims that sound empirical, like ‘These people are stuck in time.’ But if you ask, ‘Have you actually tested what they know about time?’ the answer is no.”

Award-winning poet Mary Jo Bang is one of 25 recipients of a 2014-15 Berlin Prize Fellowship. Awarded by the American Academy in Berlin, the prize includes a residential fellowship at the academy’s Hans Arnhold Center in Berlin-Wannsee. Bang will be part of the spring 2015 class and she will work on a book of poems.

Some clover species have two forms, one of which releases cyanide to discourage nibbling by snails and insects and the other of which does not. A scientist at Washington University in St. Louis found that this “polymorphism” has evolved independently in six different species of clover, each time by the wholesale deletion of a gene. The clover species are in a sense predisposed to develop this trait, suggesting that evolution is not entirely free form but instead bumps up against constraints.

The Department of Energy has awarded the Photosynthetic Antenna Research Center (PARC) $14.4 million for continuing research on natural and bio-inspired systems for harvesting the sun’s energy. The center, which is hosted by Washington University in St. Louis, was one of 32 projects selected for funding from among more than 200 proposals and one of only 22 to receive second-round funding.

A widespread pattern of human-caused environmental degradation and related flood-mitigation efforts began changing the natural flow of China’s Yellow River nearly 3,000 years ago, setting the stage for massive floods that toppled the Western Han Dynasty, suggests new research from Washington University in St. Louis.

In “Economic Realities of the American Dream,” professors Steven Fazzari and Mark Rank examine the ­American Dream’s historical meaning, the ­traditional pathways to reach it, the current obstacles to achieving it and its viability in the future.