Biological Sciences

For the seventh straight year, Vanderbilt graduate students competed March 29 to summarize years of research and discovery into a clear three-minute presentation as part of the annual Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition. Read More

For many species, extravagant displays are a critical part of attracting a mate. Think of a peacock’s long tail or a songbird’s elaborate melody. When considering these populations, scientists at Vanderbilt University wondered if they could use new methods to test a theory that has been around for almost 150… Read More

Antonis Rokas, who holds the Cornelius Vanderbilt Chair in Biological Sciences, has been elected a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology. He was among the 109 new fellows welcomed by the academy in 2019. Read More

Hiba Baroud, Jeffrey Bennett and Suzana Herculano-Houzel have been named to the first cohort of the Chancellor’s Public Voices Fellowship, a semester-long program designed to expand Vanderbilt’s global reach by amplifying the impact of faculty academic research. Read More

Three members of the School for Science and Math at Vanderbilt’s senior class are semifinalists in the Regeneron Science Talent Search. Read More

Evolutionary biologists decoded the genomes of nearly a third of known budding yeast species, allowing them to reconstruct an ancient parent’s metabolic characteristics. Read More

Far from being a weak-willed sap easily paralyzed by the emerald jewel wasp’s sting to the brain, the cockroach can deliver a stunning karate kick that saves its life, biologist Ken Catania has found. Read More

How long humans and other warm-blooded animals live—and when they reach sexual maturity—may have more to do with neurons in their cortex than body size or mass, according to new research by Associate Professor of Psychology Suzana Herculano-Houzel. Read More

This work was the foundation for an NSF grant to interrogate how the Rif1 protein controls DNA replication. Read More

James Patton and colleagues have demonstrated how colon cancer cells transmit genetic data to other cells. Read More

Prof. Carl Johnson and his team discovered on-and-off interactions between KaiA and KaiC take only seconds but combine to create a 24-hour oscillation of phosphorylation in a test tube. Read More

Twenty faculty members have been appointed to the new Limited Submission Opportunities Plus review committee to help bring innovative research to the attention of external sponsors. Read More

Vanderbilt University and Oak Ridge National Laboratory are combining their expertise in biology, chemistry, physics, mathematics and computation to address pressing problems in biology. Read More

Patrick Abbot, associate professor of biological sciences, recently published an edited volume entitled "Comparative Social Evolution," an updated companion book to E.O. Wilson’s famous 1975 tome. Read More

Humans aren't the only animals who can learn vocal communication from others. By studying the process in zebra finches, we may better understand how it works in humans, too. Read More

Bordenstein’s team studied Nasonia parasitic wasps, which are about the size of a sesame seed, and they serve as one of the best models to dissect and characterize the evolution of insect genomes. Read More

How a bacteria hijacked insect fertility remained a mystery for five decades, until Associate Professor of Biological Sciences Seth Bordenstein and his team helped solve it. Read More

The spring Flexner Discovery Lecture series wraps up on Thursday, April 26, with a presentation by Terry Orr-Weaver, PhD, professor of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Read More

College of Arts and Science professors Joel Harrington, Antonis Rokas and Edward Wright-Rios have been awarded highly prestigious 2018 Guggenheim Fellowships for their research. Read More

Vanderbilt biologist Nicole Creanza is the guest editor of a new themed issue of "Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B" highlighting interdisciplinary approaches to understanding human evolution. Read More