Biology

Taking a game theory approach to study cooperation, School of Arts and Sciences evolutionary biologists find that empathy can help cooperative behavior ‘win out’ over selfishness.

Katherine Unger Baillie ・April 9, 2019

The majority of lupus patients are female, and new findings from Montserrat Anguera of the School of Veterinary Medicine and colleagues shed light on why. The research suggests that female lupus patients don’t fully silence their second X chromosome in T cells, leading to an immune response gone awry.

Katherine Unger Baillie ・April 4, 2019

The discovery of these seemingly out-of-place sensing cells may lend insight into possibilities for protecting lung function in people who experience severe influenza infections.

Katherine Unger Baillie ・March 28, 2019

Flowers aren’t just pretty to look at; without them, plants couldn’t reproduce. Investigating the critical process of flower formation in plants, School of Arts and Sciences biologist Doris Wagner and colleagues discovered how a key gene is shut off in order for blooms to form. “Identity is not just what you are; it’s what you aren’t,” she says.

Katherine Unger Baillie ・February 25, 2019

A revamped lesson in plant diversity added a tour of the campus greenhouse for students in introductory biology courses. Greenhouse coordinator Samara Gray worked with Linda Robinson and Karl Siegert to enhance the curriculum, incorporating lessons about plant biology and taxonomy that rely on the wide range of specimens present.

Katherine Unger Baillie ・February 22, 2019

PIK Professor Sarah Tishkoff, Laura Scheinfeldt, and Sameer Soi use data from 50 populations to study African genetic diversity. Their analysis suggests that geographically far-flung hunter-gatherer groups share a common ancestry.

Katherine Unger Baillie ・February 18, 2019

To determine what goes on during sleep, a trio of Penn experts studied sleep function across phylogeny—that is, the evolutionary development of species—to find the origins of the need for sleep.

Penn Today Staff ・February 14, 2019

Linking genomics to evolution to ecology, the work takes an unusual approach to reveal broad implications of how species adapt to their local environment.

Katherine Unger Baillie ・February 6, 2019

In the largest study of its kind, researchers led by PIK Professor Sarah Tishkoff, Matthew Hansen, and Meagan Rubel investigated the gut microbiomes of people from Botswana and Tanzania, and illuminate the impact of lifestyle, geography, and genetics in shaping the microbiome.

Katherine Unger Baillie ・January 22, 2019

As a biology major, senior Andrew Ravaschiere spends much of his time in a laboratory conducting cellular research. But as a cinema and media studies minor, he got out of the lab and into the world of filmmaking during the summer, working as an intern for a documentary filmmaker.

Louisa Shepard ・December 5, 2018