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A shared past for East Africa’s hunter-gatherers
A few people stand in front of a building talking to a larger group of gathered people listening.

With the help of a local translator, Simon Thompson (in blue plaid shirt) from Sarah Tishkoff’s lab and Dawit Wolde-Meskel (in yellow shirt), a collaborator from Addis Ababa University, explain the research project on African population genetics to the Argobba population, Ethiopia. After the project is presented, the researchers answer any questions. (Credit: Tishkoff lab)

A shared past for East Africa’s hunter-gatherers

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

What does a dolphin have in common with a fruit fly?
Dolphin and fruit fly

What does a dolphin have in common with a fruit fly?

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

Have you heard the buzz? Honeybees can count

Have you heard the buzz? Honeybees can count

Elizabeth Brannon and postdoc Rosa Rugani of the School of Arts and Sciences discussed new research about honeybees’ ability to add and subtract numbers. Brannon said bees use ratios, rather than exact digits, to understand quantities. “When animals are comparing two numerical values, they’re much better if they differ by a large ratio than if they differ by a very small ratio,” she said.

How one gene in a tiny fish may alter an aquatic ecosystem
a tiny fish swims under green, murky water

Threespine stickleback, which occupy lakes across the northern latitudes, are a tiny fish with an outsize impact on evolutionary research. Penn biologist Seth Rudman has found that a single gene affects the way they interact with their environment. (Photo: Seth Rudman)

How one gene in a tiny fish may alter an aquatic ecosystem

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

The diversity of rural African populations extends to their microbiomes
A group of people, some holding sacks, next to a small rustic house and under trees

Hadza people gather to receive a government-provided food supply of beans and maize. (Photo: Alessia Ranciaro/Tishkoff Lab)

The diversity of rural African populations extends to their microbiomes

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

Cells and cinema
Penn senior Andrew Ravaschiere seated in a laboratory doing a procedure with a syringe

Penn senior Andrew Ravaschiere is a biology major conducting cellular research who also has a passion for cinema and filmmaking. 

Cells and cinema

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

How do individual decisions affect group decisions?
Colin Twomey in labratory

Colin Twomey studies how groups, both human and animal, make collective decisions. His research covers a variety of topics, including fish behavior and human color perception.

How do individual decisions affect group decisions?

Postdoctoral fellow Colin Twomey looks to fish behavior to explore the dynamic between individual and group decision-making.

Jacob Williamson-Rea

Bigger brains are smarter, but not by much
line drawing of two heads and lightbulbs implying intelligence

Bigger brains are smarter, but not by much

Using a large dataset and controlling for a variety of factors, including sex, age, height, socioeconomic status, and genetic ancestry, Gideon Nave of the Wharton School and Philipp Koellinger of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam found that people with larger brains rated higher on measures of intelligence, but only accounts for two percent of the variation in smarts.

Katherine Unger Baillie

Two from Penn named to new class of AAAS Fellows
Michel Koo and Joshua Plotkin

Hyun (Michel) Koo and Joshua Plotkin

Two from Penn named to new class of AAAS Fellows

Noted for their contributions to dental and biological sciences, respectively, Hyun (Michel) Koo of the School of Dental Medicine and Joshua Plotkin of the School of Arts and Sciences are part of the newest cohort of fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Katherine Unger Baillie