McKelvey School of Engineering

Photo by Rose BrowerChemical engineering’s John Gleaves had an April Fool’s joke — an office full of balloons — played on him by his graduate students.

Combinatorial chemistry provides researchers a vast library from which to choose.A researcher studying drug design for nerve damage therapies has gotten her answer to questions by following some old advice: she used the library. It’s not the kind of library her mother or teacher suggested, but a combinatorial chemistry library of many different protein sequences that some day might help her and her colleagues develop a successful timed drug delivery system.

A WUSTL researcher has identified a bacterium as the pathogen living on bubbles in hot water environments.A team of researchers, led by an environmental engineer at Washington University in St. Louis, has applied a molecular approach to identify the biological particles in aerosol responsible for making employees of a Colorado hospital therapeutic pool ill. They found: when the bubble bursts, the bacteria disperse, and lifeguards get pneumonia-like symptoms.

Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis is rated the third best medical school in the nation, according to this year’s U.S. News & World Report rankings of graduate and professional programs released April 1.

Dean Christopher I. Byrnes will also present the Young Alumni Award and the Dean’s Award at an April 6 dinner event.

His work contributes to the international fight against credit card fraud, identity theft and threats to national security.

Photo by Robert BostonMichael R. Brent, Ph.D., and Tamara L. Doering, M.D., Ph.D., examine data from the *C. neoformans* gene expression microarray.A team of collaborators, including two WUSTL researchers, has sequenced the genomes of two strains of Cryptococcus neoformans.

Bayly has taught at WUSTL since 1993 and holds appointments in the mechanical engineering and biomedical engineering departments.

Michael R. Brent and Tamara L. Doering examine data from the *C. neoformans* microarray.A team of collaborators, including two researchers from Washington University in St. Louis, has sequenced the genomes of two strains of the fungus Cryptococcus neoformans (C. neoformans), one which is virulent, the other harmless. This work provides researchers with clues on how the fungus does its dirty work and a host of genes to study for a better understanding of fungal pathogens in general. Estimates are that about 15 percent of people with HIV will suffer at least one life-threatening infection of C. neoformans. In Africa, that could be as much as 40 percent of HIV sufferers.

*Arabidopsis thaliana*A team headed by Craig Pikaard, Ph.D., Washington University professor of biology in Arts & Sciences, has discovered a fourth kind of RNA polymerase found only in plants and speculated to have been a plant feature for more than 200 million years.