Biological Sciences

Fecal transplants are increasingly being used to treat certain human illnesses and more scientists have begun to research the transplants' effects in animals. Read More

A team of Vanderbilt scientists have identified some of the methods that mutant mitochondrial DNA use to circumvent the molecular mechanisms that cells use to regulate mitochondrial activity. Read More

Vanderbilt biologist Kenneth Catania has accidentally discovered that electric eels can make leaping attacks that dramatically increase the strength of the electric shocks they deliver. In doing so, Catania has confirmed a 200-year-old observation by famous 19th-century explorer and naturalist Alexander von Humboldt. Read More

The first study that directly compares Neanderthal DNA in the genomes of a significant population of adults of European ancestry with their clinical records confirms that this archaic genetic legacy has a subtle but significant impact on modern human biology. Read More

An interdisciplinary team of biologists and medical researchers have created a new platform, which they call GEneSTATION specifically designed to leverage the growing knowledge of human genomics and evolution to advance scientific understanding of human pregnancy and translate it into new treatments for the problems that occur when this complex process goes awry. Read More

A new class of DNA repair enzyme has been discovered which demonstrates that a much broader range of damage can be removed from the double helix in ways that biologists did not think were possible. Read More

Recent research by Vanderbilt University biologist Ken Catania of the electric eel has revealed that it is not primitive creature that it has been portrayed as. Instead, it has a sophisticated control of the electrical fields it generates that makes it one of the most remarkable predators in the animal kingdom. Read More

Recent microbiological research has shown that plants and animals, including humans, are not autonomous individuals but are holobionts: biomolecular networks that consist of visible hosts plus millions of invisible microbes. Read More

Vanderbilt and Stanford investigators have discovered how a protein that's part of the DNA replication "machinery" helps cells tolerate DNA damage. Read More

Vanderbilt biologists have localized the seasonal light cycle effects that drive seasonal affective disorder to a small region of the brain called the dorsal raphe nucleus. Read More

Vanderbilt researchers have discovered a novel mechanism for the development of dendritic spines – sites of nerve cell communication. Read More

Vanderbilt researchers have identified the role that a key protein associated with autism and the co-occurrence of alcohol dependency and depression plays in forming the spines that create new connections in the brain. Read More

Mechanical stress appears to be a critical factor in activating normal tissue-associated fibroblasts to generate cancer-associated fibroblasts. Read More

Vanderbilt biologists have found a direct link between the biological clock and Angelman syndrome, a neurogenetic disorder that occurs in more than one in every 15,000 live births. The link may provide a valuable way to judge the effectiveness of the first experimental drugs under development for treating the syndrome. Read More

A family of single-celled organisms that thrive in environments too extreme for most other species to survive may be an untapped source of new antibacterial drugs. Read More

Vanderbilt researchers will play a key role in the second phase of the federal "tissue chip for drug screening" program. Read More

Mosquito researcher Jason Pitts collects interesting facts and stories about his research subjects, nature’s ultimate bioterrorists. Read More

The fungicide amphotericin B may be a useful treatment for a frog fungus that is killing amphibians worldwide. Read More

Seth Bordenstein, associate professor of biological sciences, and graduate student Robert Brucker, discovered that the survival of a new hybrid of wasp depended not on their genes but on the microbes that naturally lived on and inside the insects. Read More

Insights into the workings of DNA damage response proteins such as SMARCAL1 could suggest new ways to improve genome integrity and prevent cancer. Read More