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Consuming alcohol leads to epigenetic changes in brain memory centers
shape of a human head made of outlines of wine glasses, drink glasses and beer bottles.

Consuming alcohol leads to epigenetic changes in brain memory centers

What drives the biology behind alcohol cravings has remained largely unknown. A new Penn study shows how a byproduct of the alcohol breakdown produced mostly in the liver travels to the brain’s learning system and impacts behavior around environmental cues to drink.

Penn Today Staff

The science of sensations
Smiling scientist stands in a lab

Ishmail Abdus-Saboor has carved out a path studying the biology of touch, pain, and itch.

The science of sensations

To confront the ills of the opioid epidemic, scientists must develop a fundamental understanding of the biology of pain. Biologist Ishmail Abdus-Saboor’s work is setting the stage for screening alternative drugs and uncovering new pathways that an opioid-alternative could target.

Katherine Unger Baillie

Engineers solve the paradox of why tissue gets stiffer when compressed
microscopic tissue

Engineers solve the paradox of why tissue gets stiffer when compressed

Tissue gets stiffer when it’s compressed. That stiffening response is a long-standing biomedical paradox, as common sense dictates that when you push the ends of a string together, it loosens tension, rather than increasing it. New research explains the mechanical interplay between that fiber network and the cells it contains.

Penn Today Staff

Study finds kittens bond with their human caregivers like babies do

Study finds kittens bond with their human caregivers like babies do

Carlo Siracusa of the School of Veterinary Medicine advised readers to keep in mind that while babies and kittens are similar, they’re not analogous; scientific findings about one may not hold true for the other. “We should be open-minded about the idea that there are other variables [at play],” he said.

Fruit flies’ microbiomes shape their evolution
fruit fly close-up on a piece of vegetation

An ambitious outdoor experiment in fruit flies at Pennovation Works revealed that an altered microbiome can drive evolutionary change. (Photo: Seth Rudman)

Fruit flies’ microbiomes shape their evolution

In just five generations, an altered microbiome can lead to genome-wide evolution in fruit flies, according to new research led by Paul Schmidt and postdoc Seth Rudman of the School of Arts and Sciences.

Katherine Unger Baillie

A molecular ‘atlas’ of animal development
An abstract depiction of data features an elongated shape with various projections in pixels of different colors.

Each cell of a developing nematode worm embryo is catalogued at the molecular level in a new paper out in Science. In this visualization of the dataset, each dot represents a single cell, its color represents the age of the embryo it came from (orange=early, green=mid, blue/red=late), and the dots are arranged so that cells with similar transcriptomes are near each other. Visualized this way, the data form various thin “trajectories” that correspond to tissues and individual cell types. (Image: Cole Trapnell)

A molecular ‘atlas’ of animal development

Scientists have studied the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans for decades, making essential contributions to basic science. In the latest milestone, a team uses cutting-edge technology to individually profile the genes expressed in more than 80,000 cells in a developing C. elegans embryo.

Katherine Unger Baillie

‘Information gerrymandering’ poses a threat to democratic decision making
Pixelated image of a brain with red, blue, and purple regions

Information gerrymandering can change the way we think about political decisions, as depicted in this image of a gerrymandered mind. People must integrate disparate sources of information when deciding how to vote. But information does not always flow freely; it can be constrained by social networks and distorted by zealots and automated bots. Researchers showed that certain structures in a social network can sway the voting outcome of towards one party, even when both parties have equal size and each player has the same influence, a phenomenon they called “information gerrymandering." (Image: Alexander Stewart)

‘Information gerrymandering’ poses a threat to democratic decision making

Concern over fake news and online trolls is widespread and warranted, but researchers have identified another impediment to the free flow of information in social networks. The phenomenon, which they term “information gerrymandering,” arises from the structure of a social network and introduces bias into collective decisions.

Katherine Unger Baillie

A society’s cultural practices shape the structure of its social networks
Parent teaching child how to mow grass

People learn either by observing those around them or by innovating. A new study from Penn biologists Marco Smolla and Erol Akçay demonstrates how cultures can evolve based on what kind of learning and skills are required to thrive within them.

A society’s cultural practices shape the structure of its social networks

Biologists Erol Akçay and Marco Smolla used mathematical models to show that societies that favor generalists, who have a wide range of skills, are less well-connected than those societies that favor specialists, who are highly skilled at a smaller number of traits.

Katherine Unger Baillie

‘Smart aviary’ poised to break new ground in behavioral research
outside the smart aviary

‘Smart aviary’ poised to break new ground in behavioral research

A collaboration that has brought together biologists, engineers, and physicists to study the reproductive behavior of birds using machine learning in a custom-built aviary at Pennovation Works.

Katherine Unger Baillie