biology

We would all like to believe that there is a kind of karma in life that guarantees those who cheat eventually pay for their bad behavior, if not immediately, then somewhere down the line. But a study of a new gene in the amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum suggests that, at least for amoebae, it is possible to cheat and get away with it.

Tiffany Knight, PhD, associate professor of biology and director of the Environmental Studies Program in Arts & Science, is on sabbatical in Hawaii working to pull some of its many endangered plant species back from the brink.

On September 7 the Partnership for Undergraduate Life Sciences Education (PULSE) announced that Kathryn Miller, PhD, professor and chair of biology at Washington University in St. Louis has been selected as one of 40 Vision and Change Leadership Fellows. Over the next year the Vision and Change Leadership Fellows will consider and then recommend models for improving undergraduate life-sciences education.

Scientists at Washington University in St. Louis have found a gene that seems to unleash the courtship ritual in male fruit flies. Males missing this gene are capable of courtship; they just have trouble getting started. Usually male fruit flies are “highly sexed,” to the point that they will court and mount “perfumed dummies,” decapitated females coated in waxy pheromones.

A biology lab at Washington University in St. Louis has successfully cracked the structure of an enzyme made by Plasmodium falciparum, the parasitical protozoan that causes the most lethal form of malaria. Plasmodium cannot live without the enzyme, which is uses to make cell membrane. Because people don’t make this enzyme, it is an ideal target for an anti-malarial drug.  Such a drug might kill Plasmodium but have minimal side effects for people.

Any multicellular animal poses a special difficulty for the theory of evolution. Most of its cells will die without reproducing, and only a privileged few will pass their genes. Given the incentive for cheating, how is cooperation among the cells enforced? In the Dec. 16 issue of the journal Science, Washington University in St. Louis biologists Joan Strassmann and David Queller suggest the answer is frequent population bottlenecks that restart populations from a single cell.

Her nose habitually buried in a Nancy Drew mystery, little Kathy Miller spent much of her girlhood trying to crack the case. Today, Kathryn G. Miller, PhD, professor and chair of biology in Arts & Sciences, still is playing detective. With Sherlock Holmes-like intensity, Miller studies cells the way a special agent scrutinizes a crime scene.

Peter Wyse Jackson, PhD (left), who has been appointed to succeed Peter H. Raven, PhD, the Engelmann Professor of Botany, as president of the Missouri Botanical Garden, visited the Danforth Campus March 3 to meet biology department faculty and to deliver a seminar on international efforts to slow or halt the loss of biodiversity.

Washington University is in the spotlight for its pivotal role in the Genomics Education Partnership, a collaborative effort to provide research experience in genomics to undergraduate classrooms across the country.

ElginWashington University in St. Louis is in the spotlight for its pivotal role in the Genomics Education Partnership, a collaborative effort to provide research experience in genomics to undergraduate classrooms across the country. At the helm of this mission is Sarah C.R. Elgin, Ph.D., WUSTL professor of biology and professor of education in Arts & Sciences, as well as professor of biochemistry & molecular biophysics and professor of genetics in the School of Medicine.