Department News

The interdisciplinary journal, ScienceAdvances, has published a study on mucins. The study demonstrates how a long-time partnership between evolutionary biologists and dental researchers at UB is yielding new insights into genes and proteins that are also important to human health. Senior authors are Omer Gokcumen (UB associate professor of biological sciences) and Stefan Ruhl (interim dean of the UB School of Dental Medicine and a professor of oral biology). The first author is Petar Pajic, UB PhD student in biological sciences.  “My team has been studying mucins for many decades, and my collaboration with Dr. Gokcumen has brought this research to a new level by revealing all these exciting novel insights into their evolutionary genetics,” Ruhl says. “At this advanced stage of my career, it is also immensely gratifying to see that the flame of scientific curiosity is being carried on by a new generation of young investigators like Petar Pajic.”

Dr. Zhen Wang's research project aims to pinpoint the genes that plants use to produce medicinal compounds could enable scientists to explore faster, more efficient methods of manufacturing these substances. This could include genetically engineering microbes to synthesize the drugs. One goal of the project is to decipher how the foxglove plant Digitalis lanata makes compounds called cardenolides, which have pharmaceutical relevance. See feature by UB Now.

Dr. David Hoekstra, Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, was awarded the 2022 Graduate Faculty Teaching Award by the Northeastern Association of Graduate Schools (NAGS) at the Master’s level. NAGS is comprised of all graduate schools across the Northeast and also includes graduate schools in the Canadian southeast. 

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded a grant, totaling $2,945,234., to support the UB Biological Sciences research study by Charlotte Lindqvist as Principal Investigator. Co-principal investigators are Jason Briner, Elizabeth Thomas, and Corey  Krabbenhoft.

“Knowing which genes are active among different species during pregnancy tells us about how evolution works,” says senior author Vincent J. Lynch, associate professor of biological sciences, College of Arts and Sciences. “But it also tells us about what makes a healthy pregnancy, and how things might go wrong. We’re finding the genes that establish the right kind of environment for healthy human pregnancies. If those genes are not expressed in the right way, that might give rise to problems.” Read article by Charlotte Hsu.

Spectrum, the leading source of news and expert opinion on autism research, reports on the work of UB Biological Sciences Professors Soo and Jae Lee in "portraits of scientists who are making a mark on autism research". Read the Spectrum News/Profiles, here.

The Department of Biological Sciences is pleased to announce that Dr. Jessica Poulin, Clinical Associate Professor, and, Barbara McCabe, Instructional Supoort Staff, have each received the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence. The Chancellor’s Awards acknowledge and provide system-wide recognition for consistently superior professional achievement and the ongoing pursuit of excellence. See the UB Now story, here.

The Wolly Mammoth always attracts attention, which is why PBS Digital Studios features the episode, How To Build A Woolly Mammoth (But Should We?) Presented by PBS Eons, host Blake de Pastino is on a "quest to understand how evolution basically built the woolly mammoth, we may have found the blueprints for building them ourselves." The segment cites Vincent Lynch's research on elephantoid genome.

Omer Gokcumen's work on evolutionary genomics was featured on Radioshop, in a segment entitled Neanderthal's Revenge. The program's co-host, Latif Nasser,  reported on his own "medical journey that made him not only question what was going on in his body, but also dig into the secret genetic story of how we became human."  While looking into the origins of Crohn's Disease, Nasser came upon a research article by Gokcumen. The full podcast is here. 

The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published a study led by Charlotte Lindqvist that analyzed the genomes of 64 modern polar and brown bears, including several new genomes from Alaska, a state where both species are found. The team also produced a new, more complete genome for a polar bear that lived 115,000 to 130,000 years ago in Norway’s Svalbard archipelago. DNA for the ancient polar bear was extracted from a tooth attached to a subfossil jawbone, which is now housed at the Natural History Museum at the University of Oslo. Read the news story by Charlotte Hsu.

“Understanding how some animals evolved to be relatively cancer-free despite having giant bodies and living a really long time is all about understanding how evolution works,” says Vincent Lynch, associate professor of biological sciences, College of Arts and Sciences. “If you can figure out how it is these animals evolved to be relatively cancer-free, we can learn something about evolution and maybe that can teach us something about how we can treat cancer in humans.” Read more.

The Department of Biological Sciences is pleased to announce that Dr. Jessica Poulin, Clinical Associate Professor, has won the 2022 Mid-American Conference (MAC) Outstanding Faculty Award for Student Success.  She is among the twelve institutional winners recognized for their outstanding efforts to support and develop students both inside and outside of the classroom. She is past recipient of the Milton Plesur Excellence in Teaching Award, and, the UB Teaching Innovation Award.

Research at the Lee Lab has uncovered new details about the process through which motor neurons develop into subtypes that connect the spinal cord with different target muscles and help to activate different body parts. The findings have been published in the journal, Nature Communications. Read the news article by Charlotte Hsu.

“Our publication details how GSK3β attaches a molecular tag to kinesin 1 motors, which causes the motors to stop without detaching from microtubule tracks. We are super excited, since now we know how to control the ‘engine’ while it is moving on a track,” says senior author Shermali Gunawardena, PhD,  associate professor of biological sciences. The findings — based on laboratory experiments, including some in the neurons of fruit fly larvae — could open the door for future research on pausing motors as a mechanism for treating diseases. Read the news article by Charlotte Hsu.

Victor A. Albert, PhD, Empire Innovation Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, along with a large international team from China, the U.S., Singapore, France and Canada, are co-authors of a study recently published in Nature Genetics. Their research not only adds new chapters to the history of the lychee, it also provides an in-depth look at flowering time, a hugely important trait in agriculture. “Early-maturing lychees versus late-maturing lychees came from different places and were domesticated independently,” says Dr. Albert, “This, by itself, is an interesting story, but we also wanted to know what causes these differences. Why do these varieties fruit and flower at different times?” By comparing the DNA of many lychee varieties, the team identified a genetic variant that could be used to create a simple test for identifying early- and late-blooming lychee plants. Read the news story by Charlotte Hsu.

"Making biofuels from renewable resources like glucose has great potential to advance green energy technology," says biochemist Zhen Q. Wang, assistant professor of biological sciences, College of Arts and Sciences. "Glucose is produced by plants through photosynthesis, which turns carbon dioxide (CO2) and water into oxygen and sugar. So the carbon in the glucose — and later the olefins — is actually from carbon dioxide that has been pulled out of the atmosphere.”  The research project, led by Wang at UB and Michelle C. Y. Chang at UC Berkeley, marks an advance in efforts to create sustainable biofuels. “We combined what biology can do the best with what chemistry can do the best, and we put them together to create this two-step process. Using this method, we were able to make olefins directly from glucose." Read the news story by Charlotte Hsu.