Author: Aiman Faruqi
Dr. Ryan Mills, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computational Medicine & Bioinformatics, and the Department of Human Genetics, at the University of Michigan Medical School. Dr. Mills earned his Bachelor’s degree in biology at Wabash College, his Ph.D. in bioinformatics at Georgia Tech, and was a postdoctoral fellow at both Emory University and Harvard Medical School. His research is focused on developing algorithms for identifying structural variation in human genomes and assessing their role in various disease phenotypes
Author: Kaitlyn Ramsay
It was 1988 when Leslie Mackenzie, then a graduate student at Queens University, was told by his supervisor that he would be giving an anatomy lecture the next day to a group of student nurses. “To prepare for that I did what anyone would have done - I read the textbook,” recalls Mackenzie of his first teaching experience. After the lecture Mackenzie stuck around to speak with the students. The feedback was unanimous. “They said I sounded just like a textbook which I could only assume was negative,” Mackenzie laughed as he recalled the students’ comments.
Author: Anastasiya Maryukova
My career started with doing an honors undergraduate degree at the University of Guelph, double majoring in biochemistry and biomedical sciences. During my third and fourth year summers I worked as a high school biology tutor/teacher at Atomic Energy Chalk River Laboratories (AECL). It was an enjoyable experience and it gave me work experience during my undergraduate years, which was important for making future connections. After completing my B.Sc., I proceeded to a combined MSc/Ph.D degree at University of Toronto, specializing in medical bio physics.
Author: Aiman Faruqi
Researchers at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Broad Institute at Harvard have identified previously unknown epigenetic pathways that may contribute to the development of insulin resistance. The team, whose paper was published in Nature Cell Biology in January, hopes its discovery may reveal the root causes of type-2 diabetes, a disease that afflicts nearly 30 million Americans.
Author: Ria Foye-Edwards
There are many diseases characterized by a high level of communicability and a diverse array of symptoms. One such disease, HIV-1, can sicken some infected individuals rather quickly, but in other infected individuals, the symptoms can occur much later. Of the two types of HIV, HIV-1 and HIV-2, HIV-1 is the most common strain and, like HIV-2, is easily transmitted through blood, sexual contact and from mother to child during childbirth. The varying onset of HIV-1 symptoms in patients has puzzled doctors for decades. Researchers at the University of Minnesota might have an explanation for the genetic variation responsible for differences in the onset of HIV-1 symptoms.
Author: Belinda Ongaro
It may be a bit mind-bending to consider the possibility of parallel worlds interacting, let alone existing, but a recent theory proposed by Griffith University researchers suggests that there may be more to their model than science fiction. Professor Howard Wiseman and researcher Michael Hall, PhD, from Griffith University, along with Dirk-Andre Deckert, PhD, of the University of California, recently reported that their radical “Many Interacting-Worlds”(MIW) theory is not only plausible, but also potentially testable.
Author: Emma Loewe
One morning in 2004, molecular geneticist Lisa Satterwhite was sitting at her office in Duke Hospital’s Cardiology Department when she came across a newspaper article that would ultimately shape the trajectory of her research. Lisa was struck by the story of Carlitos Herrera-Candelario, a child born without arms or legs. Carlitos was a victim of tetra-amelia, a rare disorder characterized by missing limbs, and he also suffered spinal and lung deformities
Author: Hriday Bhambhvani
From upstate New York, to New Mexico, Texas, and finally Alabama, Dr. David Hilton has been around the block to say the least. Hilton completed his doctoral studies in applied physics at Cornell University under the guidance of Dr. Chung Tang and is now an associate professor of physics at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). Unlike many Ph.D. level researchers, Hilton is actively involved in undergraduate education. He is the sole lecturer for the honors general physics classes at UAB – a class lauded by many a student – and has spearheaded the movement for honors education in introductory physics courses.
Author: Maria Zagorulya
JYI spoke with Julia Ablaeva, a Russian lab technician working at University of Rochester. Ablaeva tells us what it’s like to be the power horse of the research lab and how she got there. Today she performs cutting-edge research in cancer and ageing in the laboratory of Dr. Gorbunova and Dr. Seluanov.
Author: Anastasiya Maryukova Pankin
Autism is a disorder that affects many children, but very little is known about its cause and development. A new study, conducted by University of Toronto researchers, sheds light on poorly understood tiny gene fragments, called microexons, and their vital role in neuronfunction. Manuel Irimia, a post-doctoral fellow at University of Toronto, and Benjamin Blencowe, a professor at the Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research, led the study.
Author: Emma Loewe
Dr. Ana Barros is a professor in Duke’s department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Her research is primarily focused on hydrology and climate modeling. She works to find new insight into clouds and rain – things that may seem simple on the surface but are actually full of complexity.
Author: Niamh Higgins
JYI recently sat down with the vivacious Irish evolutionary biologist Dr. Mary O’Connell to talk about her work, her recent expedition to Peru and what traits undergraduates need to succeed in this field.
Author: Hriday Bhambhvani
Obsessive dogs, anxious frogs, and depressed hogs – you name it; the list goes on and on. We’ve all heard of animals, particularly some of our closer canine and feline friends, that suffer from psychiatric illnesses. In fact, animals develop the entire gamut of mental disorders, save for one: schizophrenia. According to current literature, psychosis has yet to reported outside of a human substrate. In contrast, obsession, anxiety, and depression have been described in many non-human species.
Author: Maria Zagorulya
Diseases caused by parasites have had devastating effects on the world’s poorest nations, and the drugs developed by these researchers have had immeasurable health benefits in these regions. This year the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded for the development of therapies against parasitic diseases. One half of the prize was awarded to Youyou Tu "for her discoveries concerning a novel therapy against Malaria," and the other half to William C. Campbell and Satoshi Ōmura "for their discoveries concerning a novel therapy against infections caused by roundworm parasites."
Author: Maria Zagorulya
The most obvious career choice for life sciences students is research, and the essential dilemma of aspiring researchers is the choice between industry and academia. There are certainly other career options—government positions and scientific consulting, for instance—but industry versus academia remains the popular set of choices for many biology students. This article provides a comparative overview of these different career paths.
