We congratulate all of our 2019-20 PhD graduates from the BSD. Each has attained the highest degree awarded, and some have had their extraordinary accomplishments acknowledged through the award of their program's prize for contributions to their field. Simone Rauch’s outstanding thesis work has additionally been recognized with the BSD Best Dissertation Award. We also recognize Professor Megan McNerney, nominated by her students for her passion for research and dedication to training, as a recipient of the University’s Graduate Teaching and Mentoring Award.
UChicago Biosciences graduate students Amanda Keplinger (Cell and Molecular Biology, Advisor: Alexander Ruthenburg), Hannah Martin (Neurobiology, Advisor: Ruth Anne Eatock) and Jaeda Patton (Genetics, Genomics and Systems Biology, Advisor: Joseph Thornton), have been awarded 2020 National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowships. This highly competitive fellowship program recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in NSF-supported sciences, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines.
Non-coding RNA (ncRNA) profiling can be used to identify parts of DNA that determine how cells in the eye develop. One such region, highlighted here in green in a developing mouse retina, directs cells to grow into rods; the red areas are for cones
DNA contains the instructions for every component, function, and life cycle of each individual cell. The DNA library is expansive and vast, but all cells in our body use the same template. So, how is it that different cells within our bodies can use the same DNA, or genome, to make so many different cell types? How can the same instructions direct the cells of the heart, of the eye, and of every other part of our bodies?
The COVID-19 virus is made out of RNA. Decoding how it actually functions is key to slowing or stopping the virus's path around the world
As scientists around the world race to decode the coronavirus that has caused more than 15,000 deaths in a matter of months, a group of University of Chicago chemists are focusing on understanding how the virus’s RNA works—which could translate to a more effective vaccine.
The health, safety and well-being of our BSD community, on and off-campus, is our top priority. We will continue to update the community regularly to keep you informed. Information on BSD-specific resources can be found here. Also please continue to consult the University and University of Chicago Medicine guidance as appropriate.
Micrograph of laboratory-grown heart muscle cells. Fluorescent labeling shows mitochondria (red), cytoskeleton (green), and nuclei (blue).
Two University of Chicago scientists are part of an international team of researchers awarded a three-year, nearly $4 million grant to define every cell type in the human heart.
Much like babies at birth, stem cells harbor the magic of possibility. A stem cell has the potential to become a multitude of different adult cells within the body. It could eventually mature—or differentiate—into a fat cell or heart cell or nerve cell, for example.
Two University of Chicago research teams have received funding from The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust to contribute to building a Gut Cell Atlas, a collaborative effort that aims to define every type of cell in the human ileum (the last part of the small intestine) and colon.
Disease embeddings group different conditions by type and plot them in two-dimensional space to show how closely they are related to one another.
Physicians use standard disease classifications based on symptoms or location in the body to help make diagnoses. These classifications, called nosologies, can help doctors understand which diseases are closely related, and thus may be caused by the same underlying issues or respond to the same treatments.
Matthew Stephens has been named the Ralph W. Gerard Professor in the Departments of Statistics and Human Genetics and the College. Stephens’ research focuses on a wide variety of problems at the interface of statistics and genetics. His lab often tackles problems where novel statistical methods are required, or can learn something new compared with existing approaches. Much of that work involves developing new statistical methodologies, many of which have a non-trivial computational component.
