Further Findings

Diatoms are one of the most common types of phytoplankton and a major group of algae. One species, Didymosphenia geminata, is responsible for creating thick blooms in mountain streams and ponds. It’s a menace to ocean-going vessels, where it causes drag, and in hospitals, where it can coat moist surfaces and promote bacteria.

For researchers in the lab of Edward Theriot at The University of Texas at Austin, diatoms (and their snot) are rich objects of biological research. Read the full
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Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin and the Stanford University School of Medicine have found a novel way to engineer key cells of the immune system so they remain resistant to infection from HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
The study, which was published this week in Molecular Therapy, describes the use of a kind of molecular scissors to cut and paste a series of HIV-resistant genes into T cells, specialized immune cells targeted by the virus.

The new approach
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Biochemist Esmond Snell, a researcher at The University of Texas at Austin and the University of California, Berkeley, left a legacy that continues to affect people’s lives.

Part of his legacy is that fewer babies are born with neural tube defects such as spina bifida and anencephaly because of one of his discoveries.

In 1941 Snell, who died in 2003, and Texas colleague Herschel Mitchell discovered folic acid, a B vitamin needed to make DNA and RNA and that enables red blood
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Although his goal is to someday help destroy HIV and other viruses and retroviruses that form persistent, lifelong infections, biologist Chris Sullivan can’t help but admire the strategies that many of these viruses have evolved to evade our defenses.

Chris Sullivan, associate professor of molecular genetics and microbiology.

“It’s brilliant,” says Sullivan, associate professor of molecular genetics and microbiology. “Take Herpes simplex virus 1, for instance, which is one of the masters. It goes in and infects very long-lived neurons, and then
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There’s a problem for scientists trying to understand why populations of southern flounder have been in such decline in the waters of the Texas Gulf.

“They live underwater,” says Benjamin Walther, assistant professor of marine science in the College of Natural Sciences. “We can’t just follow them from birth to death. You can tag a fish with acoustic or satellite tags when it’s an adult, but typically the young are too small and fragile. So you’re missing that whole big piece
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Singing mice are not your average lab rats. Their fur is tawny brown instead of the common white albino strain; they hail from the tropical cloud forests in the mountains of Costa Rica; and, as their name hints, they use song to communicate.

A male singing mouse. Photo courtesy of Bret Pasch.

Steven Phelps, an associate professor in the Section of Integrative Biology at The University of Texas at Austin, is examining these unconventional rodents to gain insights into the genes that
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We’ve rounded up some of the research highlights of the spring 2012 semester at The University of Texas at Austin.

One piece of news, growing support for a medical school at the university, isn’t exactly current research, but it could lead to vast research opportunities in health and medicine for years to come.

Noteworthy research included authoritative reports on the process of hydro-fracturing in mining natural gas, water resources in the important food-producing regions of California’s Central Valley and the Great Plains,
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It seems that the only time astronomers at The University of Texas at Austin took a break from finding new planets and bigger black holes during the fall 2011 semester was when university geologists edged in with evidence of a lake under the surface of Saturn’s moon, Europa.

As busy as those researchers were, the semester also brought discoveries in green energy, Parkinson’s disease, post-traumatic stress disorder, concealed handguns and the relationship between children’s happiness and their parents.

Here’s a look at
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Adela Ben-Yakar, an engineering professor, and Jon Pierce-Shimomura, a neurobiology professor, have teamed up to develop technology to test drugs for neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s.

Scientific collaborations across disciplines can be great when they happen.

Researchers bring different skills, expertise and perspectives that can illuminate hard problems.

But just bringing different disciplines together can be a hard problem in itself, despite work being done by universities to break down the siloes that contain them.

So we wondered how Adela Ben-Yakar, a professor in the
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Cockrell School of Engineering Associate Professor Adela Ben-Yakar and College of Natural Sciences Assistant Professor Jon Pierce-Shimomura received a competitive $3 million grant from the National Institutes of Health. The grant will fund research that aims to prevent degeneration of the nervous system, which occurs through natural aging and diseases like Alzheimer’s. Photo by Marsha Miller

This article originally appeared on the Cockrell School of Engineering Web site. It was written by Melissa Mixon.

Technology developed by researchers at The University of
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