Department 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 will be presented to Dr. Gokcumen at a university-wide celebration in the spring.

The New York times features the work of Dr. Omer Gokcumen in an article by Carl Zimmer, How Early Humans Evolved to Eat Starch. Zimmer reports on two new studies that reveal how our ancestors began carrying more amylase genes in two major waves: the first one several hundred thousand years ago, possibly as a result of humans starting to cook with fire, and the second after the agricultural revolution 12,000 years ago. “This combination of adapting to diverse environments and modifying our diets is a core tenet of what makes us human,” said Omer Gokcumen, a geneticist at the University at Buffalo who led one of the studies. Read UB Now Research News.

The FOXG1 Research Center (FRC) opened on September 26, 2024. Soo-Kyung Lee, director of the FRC and the parent of a child with FOXG1 syndrome, spoke to the crowd gathered to celebrate the center’s official opening: “Love for every individual living with FOXG1 syndrome and other neurodevelopmental disorders, as well as their caregivers, and hope that we can find a cure for FOXG1 syndrome and related disorders on the basis of scientific discoveries we are making.” Read the full story from UB News.

Shanna Snider has won the 2024 SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Professional Service. Snider will be presented the award on October 24, 2024 at UB's Celebration of Academic Excellence. The award honors professional staff performance excellence “both within and beyond the position.” Colleagues praise Snider’s time-management skills, which she uses to ready the labs so students can run multiple experiments on the same day, work with various model organisms and apply a range of advanced techniques. Read UB Now.

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

A master regulator gene, FOXG1 is one of the most important genes for early brain development and its impairment can result in profound brain structure abnormalities. Professors Soo-Kyung Lee and Jae Lee previously established that the FOXG1 gene and protein remain active in mice after birth, so they wondered if restoring FOXG1 levels could reverse some of the abnormalities associated with FOXG1 syndrome. According to their study, published June 5 in Molecular Therapy Methods & Clinical Development, the therapy normalized the number of OPCs while restoring myelination. Read the news article.

Nitasha Sehgal and Selin Arnavut are winners of the Pillars of Leadership Awards. The awards are designed to recognize individuals and organizations who have demonstrated a commitment to leadership, service, and the University at Buffalo.

The Department of Biological Sciences is pleased to announce that Sarah Lu Chang and Robert Ditter have each won cash awards in the Art of Research. The competition took place April 16, 2024, in Hamlin Hall at the Buffalo Museum of Science. The event recognizes the extraordinary research of graduate students and postdoctoral scholars by showcasing original imagery inspired by the beauty inherent in research, scholarship and creative activities.

Published in Nature Genetics, researchers have created what they say is the highest-quality reference genome to date of the world’s most popular coffee species, Arabica, unearthing secrets about its lineage that span millennia and continents. Their findings, suggest that Coffea arabica developed more than 600,000 years ago in the forests of Ethiopia via natural mating between two other coffee species. The large international team was co-led by Victor Albert, Empire Innovation Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences. Other contributors from the department include Trevor Krabbenhoft and Zhen Wang, both assistant professors of biological sciences; PhD student Steven Fleck; PhD graduate Minakshi Mukherjee; and former research scientist Tianying Lan. “Our work has not been unlike reconstructing the family tree of a very important family,” Albert says.

On the path to finding a cure for FOXG1, the work of Professors Soo-Kyung Lee and Jae Lee is leading to the foundation of the FOXG1 Research Center (FRC) at UB. The FRC aims to translate new discoveries from the lab to clinical trials and, ultimately, develop a cure for FOXG1 syndrome, as well as related autism spectrum disorders. 

“Our findings not only provide key insights into the adaptive landscape of the Nepenthes genome, but also broaden our understanding of how polyploidy — having multiple sets of chromosomes — can stimulate the evolution of new functions,” says Victor Albert, Empire Innovation Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, College of Arts and Sciences. He is co-senior author of the study, published in Nature Plants. Other contributors from UB include Charlotte Lindqvist, professor of biological sciences, and PhD students Emily Caroll and Michaela Richter. The work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation. Read article in UB Research News.

According to Dr. Corey Krabbenhoft (Department of Biological Sciences), “Freshwater mussels feed by filtering things like bacteria and contaminants out of the water. A great way to help our waterways become healthier is to invest in freshwater mussels." UB Research News published an article about the work of Krabbenhoft, and Dr. Isabel Porto-Hannes (Department of Environment and Sustainability). They are conducting a pilot study to determine if the water and sediment quality of the upper Niagara River is acceptable for a possible large-scale reintroduction of freshwater mussels to naturally clean the waterway. Read the article by Jackie Hausler

UB Research News published an article about Dr. Scott Santos, Maui native and Biological Sciences Empire Innovation Professor. Santos has been studying Halocaridina rubra for nearly two decades. He believes the tiny shrimp provide a window into how ocean life is changing due to climate change. At UB, the Santos Lab utilizes a variety of molecular tools, computational approaches and field- and laboratory-based studies to examine the ecology, evolution, genetics, physiology and symbiosis biology of a range of terrestrial and aquatic — both freshwater and marine — organisms, including host- and environmentally associated microbiomes. Santos earned his PhD here in 2002, and joined our faculty two years ago. Read the article by Meredith Forrest Kulwicki. 

The Wang Lab's  breakthrough discovery, described in a paper published July 8 in Nature Communications, builds upon knowledge of the compounds, known as cardiac glycosides. It also could help speed up production of the plant-based drug, which is among the oldest medications used in the field of cariology, and help researchers create less toxic alternatives. Read the news.

Three faculty of the Department of Biological Sciences were recently honored with university awards: the Exceptional Scholars Award for Sustained Achievement to Dr. Paul Cullen; the Teaching Innovation Award to Dr. Lara Hutson; and the Exceptional Scholars — Young Investigator Award to Dr. Eric Strobel. The Department is proud to recognize these faculty among its ranks, as they contribute to our core missions of excellence in research and teaching.

The peer-reviewed, open-access journal, iScience, has published a paper by UB evolutionary biologist Charlotte Lindqvist and collaborators, “A paleogenome from a Holocene individual supports genetic continuity in Southeast Alaska." Their findings show, using ancient genetic data analyses, that some modern Alaska Natives still live almost exactly where their ancestors did some 3,000 years ago. In addition to Lindqvist, authors of the new paper include Alber Aqil, Stephanie Gill, Omer Gokcumen, Ripan Malhi, Esther Aaltséen Reese, Jane Smith, and, Timothy Heaton. The research was funded by the National Science Foundation. Read more.

A $1.5 million grant from the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative (SFARI) has been awarded to Professor Soo-Kyung Lee to support research on the rare neurodevelopmental disorder FOXG1 Syndrome. SFARI’s mission is to improve the understanding, diagnosis and treatment of autism spectrum disorders by funding innovative research of the highest quality and relevance. The grant could help benefit people suffering from the rare genetic brain disorder. Read the article by UB Research News.

The NSF News features a story about the research of Alber Aqil, PhD candidate,  and Professor Omer Gokcumen. Their study investigates a key question in biology: why genomic variation persists in a population for extended periods. According to Rebecca Ferrell, NSF Biological Anthropology program director, "the project demonstrates the value of an expanding genomic toolkit for studying human evolution, revealing new details about the complex variation and relationships among hominins." Visit NSF News.

Alber Aqil, PhD candidate,  and Prof Omer Gokcumen are co-authors of a research paper that examines a key question in biology: why genomic variation persists in a population for extended periods. Recent studies have identified examples of genomic deletions that have remained polymorphic in the human lineage for hundreds of millennia, ostensibly owing to balancing selection. Nevertheless, genome-wide investigation of ancient and possibly adaptive deletions remains an imperative exercise. Their research demonstrates an excess of polymorphisms in present-day humans that predate the modern human-Neanderthal split (ancient polymorphisms), which cannot be explained solely by selectively neutral scenarios. The eLife paper is here. Read the research news article by Corey Nealon.

Paul Cullen, professor and director of graduate studies, is the recipient of the 2021-22 Distinguished Postdoctoral Mentor Award, which recognizes UB faculty members who excel in the mentoring of postdoctoral scholars. The award is bestowed on faculty members who not only teach their mentees, but also serve as an advocate, adviser and positive role model. Read the news story by Charles Anzalone.