Soo-Kyung Lee has been named the honoree of the 2025 Spotlight Symposia Series. The College of Arts and Sciences Spotlight Symposia Series recognizes and elevates faculty members. The event honors a particular faculty member by inviting distinguished speakers to our campus who share the honoree’s research field. As the 2025 symposium honoree, Soo-Kyung Lee will be at the center of vital national and international conversations. The event is an important venue for building scholarly relationships critical to the university.

A decade ago, UB researchers shed some light on an enduring neuroscience mystery: How exactly does a mutated huntingtin protein (HTT) cause Huntington’s disease? Now, the researchers have learned more about what can control the traffic-controlling HTT. The co-authors – all from UB – include: Rasika Rathnayake, a biological sciences PhD student; Gary Iacobucci, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher in the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences; BS graduates Jia Zeng and Jing Zheng; and associate professors of biological sciences, Shermali Gunawardena, PhD, and Michael C. Yu, PhD. Learn more via UB News.

The Department of Biological Sciences is pleased to announce that Professor Omer Gokcumen is the recipient of the President Emeritus and Mrs. Meyerson Award for Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching and Mentoring for 2025. Dr. Gokcumen, a faculty member since 2013, was acknowledged for having "consistently been a shining light of undergraduate mentorship" in the department. A common remark among his mentees was the “warm energy of the lab” that made students feel "part of his team”. He was also noted for "fostering critical thinking, interdisciplinary collaboration, [and] inclusivity”.  The award was presented to Dr. Gokcumen, March 12, 2025,  at the UB Mentoring Awards Breakfast.

Charlotte Lindqvist found herself tasked with transporting 3,000-year-old human remains across the Alaskan panhandle to their final resting place. The repatriated the individual is known as Tatóok yík yées sháawat (Young Lady in Cave) to her distant descendants, the Tlingit people of southeastern Alaska.  “As a biologist, you want to hold onto any ancient DNA samples in case you can possibly learn more from them in the future. However, these remains meant something to this community and returning them was the right thing to do,” Lindqvist says. “And I felt that it was very important to bring it there personally.”  Read Research News.

In a study published in eLife, UB-led researchers identified 109 reproductive-related gorilla genes that are often mutated when present in infertile men. There are likely even more yet to be identified. “We have a set of genes that are involved in sperm biology and have the signatures of harmful mutations when in gorillas. We can then look at those same genes in infertile men and see if they have mutations,” says the study’s lead author, Vincent Lynch, associate professor of biological sciences, College of Arts and Sciences. “Here the gorilla genome essentially acts as a discovery tool for finding candidate genes for human male fertility that we previously wouldn’t have been able to identify.”  Related Podcast, Driven to Discover: Animal Genes and Human Health with Vincent Lynch

The Cell and Molecular faculty explore how genetic information is encoded in genomes and how it is interpreted to produce functional proteins. The research interests of the faculty focus on the regulation of transcription, translation, splicing, and post-translational modifications.

Faculty study the ecology of microorganisms including how bacteria use phage-encoded toxins to evade protozoan predators, how the protozoan Tetrahymena uses chemosensation to find food, and how transcription termination regulates gene expression in Bacillus subtilis.  Other microbiology faculty study how filamentous fungi and budding yeast adapt to their environments.

Faculty in Genetics explore the molecular regulation of gene expression at various stages, including transcription, splicing, translation, and post translation modification. Our faculty also use molecular genetics approaches to study signaling, cell wall formation, protein trafficking, and neurobiology. Other faculty use population genetics approaches to identify the selective forces that act on genes.

The Neuroscience faculty explore signal transduction events during sensory perception, synaptic transmission, and disease. Specific areas of interest include hearing, taste, smell, and neurodegenerative disease. This group of researchers uses a wide array of techniques spanning the fields of electrophysiology, cell and developmental biology, microscopy and imaging, and molecular genetics.

Faculty address diverse areas of plant biology. Their work investigates molecular regulation of the photosynthetic pathway in C4 plants, biosynthetic pathways of plant products that are important as pharmaceutics, growth in difficult or contaminated environments, evolutionary biology by combining state-of-the-art genomics with molecular analyses to understand plant origins and diversification.

Faculty research concerns plant evolutionary biology; development and genomics; evolutionary biology; molecular phylogenetics and population genomics; chromatin and its impact on gene expression; genome stabilit; chromosome function; evolutionary genetics of aquatic invertebrates; and community and ecosystem ecology.

The Department of Biological Sciences has a strong history of research going back to our founding. Faculty, postdocs, graduate students, and undergraduate students all contribute to our research mission. We work with scientific colleagues across the University and around the world. Our productivity speaks volumes about our commitment to research. Please refer to the profile pages for an updated listing of publications by each faculty member.

The Department of Biological Sciences supports the research of our faculty, postdoctoral scholars, graduate students, and undergraduates through funding obtained from many granting agencies, including both government and private foundations. Active and completed grants are listed on this page.

Signaling faculty study cellular communication and the intracellular pathways that regulate activity. These faculty use a wide range of model organisms and techniques to examine a diverse array of signaling pathways involved in hormonal regulation, sensory transduction, and cell growth and metabolism.

Genomics faculty address questions concerning the mechanisms that drive evolutionary change. A variety of theoretical, descriptive and novel experimental approaches using recent advances in genomic methodology are being used to address the roles played by various evolutionary processes in shaping organisms and populations.

Faculty explore how filamentous fungi and budding yeasts assess nutrient availability and respond appropriately by adjusting gene expression, budding patterns, cell morphology, and cell wall structure. Some of these studies involve opportunistic fungal pathogens. Our faculty also use yeast as a model organism to investigate the molecular basis of gene expression, including transcription, RNA processing and translation.

Faculty in Animal Systems Biology study complex physiological and developmental processes in model animals. These systems offer important experimental advantages in their accessibility, genetic resources, or amenability to specialized biochemical and molecular analysis. The systems used include rats and mice, zebrafish, the fruit fly Drosophila, and the nematode worm C. elegans. With modern tools and techniques, our faculty creatively explore key questions relating to sensory biology and neuronal processing, gene and protein expression in metabolic syndromes, and organismal integration through endocrine signaling.