News Archive
Girls learn about plants inside and out at Pollen Power camp
Claudia Lutz.
Most summer day camps rely on some standard activities to entertain their attendees—indoor and outdoor games, crafts, field trips, and snacks. The middle school girls who…
Study finds parallels between unresponsive honey bees, autism in humans
Diana Yates.
Honey bees that consistently fail to respond to obvious social cues share something fundamental with autistic humans, researchers report in a new study. Genes most closely…
Research to investigate oil field biosouring with new technology
Emily Scott. Photo courtesy of Bruce Fouke.
A new IGB research project seeks to solve a $90 billion global problem in the oil industry while making oil drilling less harmful to the environment.
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Two undergrads improve plant carbon-cycle models
Diana Yates.
In the summer of 2012, two undergraduate students tackled a problem that plant ecology experts had overlooked for 30 years. The students demonstrated that different plant…
How iBioFAB is building on changes in synthetic biology
Emily Scott.
In the concourse research lab of IGB, a robotic system is changing the face of synthetic biology.
Described as a one-of-a-kind “living foundry,” the system is a platform…
Brief interactions spur lasting waves of gene activity in the brain
Diana Yates.
A five-minute encounter with an outsider spurs a cascade of changes in gene activity in the brain that can last for hours, researchers report in a study of stickleback fish.…
DOE Funds Major Bioenergy Research Center At Illinois Through IGB and iSEE
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is doubling down on energy research at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, funding a multi-million dollar Bioenergy Research…
New grant to study fish genomics, behavior
Kathryne Metcalf.
The three-spined stickleback is a funny sort of a fish. They’re somewhat non-distinct: drabbish silver, small, and minnow-like, native to salt- and freshwater bodies throughout…
Study identifies key player in heart enlargement
Steph Adams.
The heart is a dynamic muscle that grows and shrinks in response to stressors such as exercise and disease. The secret to its malleability lies in individual cells, which get…
New 3D model predicts best planting practices for farmers
Claire Benjamin.
As farmers survey their fields this summer, several questions come to mind: How many plants germinated per acre? How does altering row spacing affect my yields? Does it make a…
Report evaluates computational genomics skills of African scientists
Emily Scott.
A new paper co-authored by Illinois and African scientists describes how an African bioinformatics network tested researchers’ ability to perform computational genomics tasks…