Professor Eric Schaller is featured in the July/August 2018 American Society of Plant Biologists' News Luminaries Column. In the article, Prof. Schaller talks about growing up around scientists and how he became interested in molecular biology at a young age. In college, he cultivated his interest in molecular biology and near the end of his undergraduate studies, he decided to focus his work on plants.
Plants remain the focus of the work done in Prof. Schaller's research...
[more]Professor Carey Nadell's laboratory studies the interesting interactions of microbes and their environments within biofilms. Biofilms are collaborative communities made up of billions of microbes. These microbial communities may be found to play a beneficial roles such as in the gut where they help with digestion. They can also establish themselves in less desirable places where they cause dangerous infections. Prof. Nadell and his lab...
[more]Some microorganisms produce nanostructures that morphologically and genetically resemble viruses, but don’t behave like typical viruses. Oddly, these structures package random pieces of DNA of their microbial host and, as a result, do not appear to propagate by infecting microbes and making more copies of themselves. Since these elements can deliver the packaged DNA to other cells, they were dubbed gene transfer agents (GTAs). It is not clear whether GTAs represent atypical viruses,...
[more]Congratulations to Biology majors Dylan Cahil '18, Kennedy Jensen '18 and Nicholas Norwitz '18 on their induction into Dartmouth's Alpha Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa! Dartmouth Phi Beta Kappa inductees must have one of the top twenty cummulative grade point averages after completing eight terms of study at Dartmouth.
Biology major, Anant Mishra '19 received the Phi Beta Kappa Sophmore Prize for holding one of the highest grade point averages in his class. Congratulations Anant!
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[more]Professor Hannah ter Hofstede, Neukom Fellow Dr. Laurel Symes and biologist Dr. Sharon Martinson are interested in understanding the stratagies and trade-offs employed by insects that allow them to attract mates while trying to avoid notice by bat predators. To learn more about their work, please see Joe Blumberg's article in Dartmouth News at this link: ...
[more]Every organism prefers a certain ambient temperature, but what happens when it experiences a change in temperature? Prof. Olga Zhaxybayeva and her colleagues at the University of Alberta have examined how an oil-dwelling bacterium Kosmotoga olearia, the current "record holder" of the growth temperature range, responds to temperature fluctuations. In their paper in the Extremophiles journal, the researchers report that change in temperature affects about a quarter of this bacterium'...
[more]Prof. Matt Ayres is an internationally recognized expert on the effects of climate change on the impact and distribution insects. In the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine article, "Beetle Mania" he talks about his work on the southern pine beetle, the impact of invasive, non-native insects and being summoned to the World Bank to discuss climate change and invasive insect species.
To read the full article, please click here...
[more]Prof. Olga Zhaxybayeva's work on the classification of microorganisms has revealed that classifying microorganisms is more complicated than previously thought. Her paper, A null model For mcrobial diversification published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, shows that a simple birth-death cycle of cells may explain...
[more]Prof. Richard Holmes has been awarded the New England Society Book Award for his book Hubbard Brook: The Story of a Forest Ecosystem (Yale University Press, 2016). Prof. Holmes and Dr. Gene E Likens co-authored this book, which highlights the remarkable and impactful long-term ecological research conducted at the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest in New Hampshire’s White Mountains over the last 50 years.” For more information about the award, please click...
[more]National Public Radio interviewed Dr. Laurel Symes, Dr. Sharon Martinson and Prof. Hannah ter Hofstede about their research on the sounds of the rain forest. The group is studing the complex ultrasonic communications of bats and their insect prey. The read or hear the full interview please visit the NPR website at the following link: https://www.npr.org/2017/04/04/521452464/sound-matters-sex-...
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