The immune system does battle in the intestines to keep bacteria in check
New research from Penn’s School of Veterinary Medicine demonstrates that Yersinia pseudotuberculosis, a relative of the bacterial pathogen that causes plague, triggers the body’s immune system to form lesions in the intestines called granulomas.
The BioPond, as it’s widely known, sits amid campus buildings, offering a place of respite for both the Penn community and the broader West Philadelphia community. Its accessibility sets it apart from many botanical gardens, Kuracina says.
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Who, What, Why: Tess Kuracina tends to the ‘BioPond,’ a beloved campus oasis
As garden supervisor for the treasured green space formally known as the James G. Kaskey Memorial Park, Kuracina plans, plants, waters, and weeds, aiming to make it ‘more beautiful and special every year.’
Green solutions are transforming a West Philadelphia grade school
With support from grants and the Netter Center, the Andrew Hamilton School in Cobbs Creek is now home to a food forest and a thriving garden, providing healthy produce, green space, stormwater management, and educational opportunities.
Study participants included individuals from the Hadza, a group who traditionally practiced hunting and gathering and speak a language that includes click sounds. They live in what is now Tanzania.
(Image: Tishkoff Laboratory)
Genomics reveals a complex human history in Africa
An international team of researchers led by Penn geneticists sequenced the genomes of 180 Indigenous Africans. The results shed light on the origin of modern humans, African population history, and local adaptation.
Providing the inducible pluripotent stem cells with appropriate growth conditions and signals, the research team was able to coax the cells to begin to resemble primordial germ cells found in marmoset embryos.
(Image: Yasunari Seita)
Rewiring blood cells to give rise to precursors of sperm
School of Veterinary Medicine researchers teamed with scientists at the University of Texas at San Antonio to transform blood cells to regain a flexible fate, growing into a precursor of sperm cells.
Sinem Esra Sahingur has both research and administrative duties as associate dean of graduate studies and student research at Penn Dental Medicine.
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Advancing research and education to push forward oral health excellence
Since joining the School of Dental Medicine faculty in 2019, Sinem Esra Sahingur has launched two new master’s programs, expanded student research, and continued to pursue her own research program on immune regulation.
Jade Hatton and Anna Polášková of the CryoEco Group at Prague’s Charles University, collaborators of the BiCycles Lab, work in Greenland’s Upernavik region.
(Image: Jack Murphy)
From glacier ice, a wealth of scientific data
Biogeochemist Jon Hawkings of the School of Arts & Sciences and his lab study glaciers to understand the cycling of elements through Earth’s waters, soils, and air in its coldest regions, with implications for climate change, ecosystem health, and more.
Jari, an 8-year-old Finnish spitz, takes in the odor of a sample taken from a deer with chronic wasting disease. Penn Vet scientists are working to see whether detection dogs trained to discern the disease’s scent could be employed as a tool in helping contain its spread.
(Image: Shelby Wise/Wise K9 Photography)
Trained dogs can sniff out a deadly deer disease
The proof-of-concept investigation by School of Veterinary Medicine researchers suggests detection dogs could be an asset in the effort to identify, contain, and manage chronic wasting disease, a highly contagious ailment.
An innate mechanism in human cells may prevent Ebola virus from spreading, according to new Penn Vet-led research. Using powerful confocal microscopy, they tracked the budding of virus-like particles from cells (shown in the filamentous projections in the cell in the upper right) and how autophagy, a “self-eating” cellular process, by which viral proteins are sequestered in vesicles (shown in the cell in the lower left), inhibits virus-like particles from exiting.
(Image: Courtesy of the Harty lab)
Harnessing an innate protection against Ebola
School of Veterinary Medicine researchers have identified a cellular pathway that keeps Ebola virus from exiting human cells, with implications for developing new antivirals.
Biologists from the School of Arts & Sciences explored how symbiotic relationships between species evolve to become specific or general, cooperative, or antagonistic.
