Category: genetics

Silicon Valley entrepreneurs Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin and Yuri Milner jointly established a foundation to reward excellence in life sciences, the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences Foundation. And a Franklin alumna is among the 11 inaugural winners of the $3 million award:

The newly created Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences Foundation on Wednesday announces the first 11 winners of an award intended to inject excitement into the sometimes lonely, underfunded quests to understand and combat cancer, diabetes, Parkinson's disease and other maladies.

Zuckerberg, who founded Facebook; Brin, who co-founded Google; and Milner, a venture capitalist, have dipped into their fortunes to sponsor awards worth $3m each, compared with a Nobel prize's monetary value of $1.1m.

Cori Bargmann (BS '81) is the Torsten N. Wiesel Professor at Rockefeller University and head of the Lulu and Anthony Wang Laboratory of Neural Circuits and Behavior who studies how animals detect and respond to a sensory stimulus. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and has received the Kavli Prize in Neuroscience. She received her degree in biochemistry at UGA and as an undergraduate, studied with former Franklin College Dean Wyatt Anderson:

"I had to sit down on the floor for a while. I thought it must be a practical joke or a Nigerian scam," said Cornelia Bargmann, 51, who has pioneered work on neural circuits and behaviour at the Rockefeller University. "The scale of this is so outsized I think it will have a huge impact on the life sciences." Asked how she would spend the money she hesitated. "It's so far outside my normal planning I don't know. Get the car fixed?"

Congratulations, Cori. Your alma mater is proud and we know you'll find some great ways to put the money to use.

This is a big discovery:

University of Georgia researchers discovered important genetic clues about the history of microorganisms called archaea and the origins of life itself in the first ever study of its kind. Results of their study shed light on one of Earth's oldest life forms.

"Archaea are an ancient form of microorganisms, so everything we can learn about them could help us to answer questions about the origin of life," said William Whitman, a microbiology professor in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences and co-author on the paper.

Felipe Sarmiento, lead author and doctoral student in the microbiology department, surveyed 1,779 genes found in the genome of Methanococcus maripaludis, aquatic archaea commonly found in sea marshes, to determine if they were essential or not and learn more about their functions. He found that roughly 30 percent, or 526 genes, were essential. 

A ScienceNow article in Wired.com features the work of a faculty member from psychology:

Primatologist Dorothy Fragaszy of the University of Georgia in Athens says orangutans might have ideas of the sort that Gruber describes, but that’s not the most plausible explanation. Fragaszy cautions that Gruber cites only one study that discusses orangutans developing stick skills in the wild — and she says that work isn’t conclusive about when orangutans begin experimenting. “I would say [the orphans] were somewhere along the normal process of learning about [tool use], which involves watching and trying,” when they left the wild. “They had enough practice,” she adds, “that they [could] do it later, in this simpler situation.”

And Science Daily features an article about clues to cotton fiber improvement that discusses work (and quotes) plant biology professor Andrew Paterson:

The DOE JGI's contribution of sequencing and assembling the 760-million basepair genome stems from a Community Sequencing Program proposal led by University of Georgia professor Andrew Paterson. "This study represents the first time that a polyploid plant was compared to its progenitors over the entire genome," he said. "This study reveals evolutionary processes salient to all plants and provides a strategy to better understand the genome of many other crops, such as canola, wheat, and peanut."

Congratulations to these faculty members for their efforts to get their work into the public sphere. It is a difficult and important spect of the academic mission to share research insights as widely as possible, and we can all hope to improve on our abilities to communicate with the writers and editors who help disseminate this information.

Lots of great speakers on campus during the last week of October. I'll talk about dance choreographer Liz Lerman next week but the deparment of psychology will also bring to campus a neuroscientist whose work identifies the neural and genetic mechanisms that underlie physical attraction, love and family bonds. The lecture, on Nov. 2 at 12:20 p.m. in room 148 of the Miller Learning Center, is free and the public invited to attend.

Larry Young is the author of "The Chemistry Between Us: Love, Sex, and the Science of Attraction" (Current, 2012). At Emory University, he is the William P. Timmie Professor in the department of psychiatry and director of the Center for Translational Social Neuroscience.

Young's work with prairie voles, which form monogamous, lifetime pair bonds, has highlighted the roles of the hormones oxytocin and vasopressin in regulating social behavior. His lab is now applying the basic understanding that his prairie vole research has revealed to identify drugs to treat human conditions associated with impaired social cognition, such as autism spectrum disorder and schizophrenia. His talk at UGA, titled "The Chemistry Between Us: From Genes and Brains to Monogamy and Autism Therapies," will give an overview of his findings and discuss future directions for research.

The life of the mind is all around you. Engage it.

The slowest-moving indicators can often be the most difficult to study, requiring patience and a general knowledge of many overlapping correlations. It's axiomatic that the seeming constants in life become the benchmarks and things we depend on, even though there are no true constants - with the exception of change itself. Learning from these changes also takes a great deal of patience, honed skills of observation and a diversity of knowledge that runs through many disciplines. Ecology is the study of the many systems that work together to form our natural environment, and so it follows that ecology is a kind of umbrella super-structure of study that touches many parts of the university, including of course, the Franklin College.

UGA is the home of the man who initially formulated many of the systems theories of modern ecology, Eugene Odum, widely considered the father of modern ecology. Our Odum School of Ecology is properly the base of this umbrella discipline, which has connections thoughout the Franklin College - from genetics and anthropology to marine science, statistics and elsewhere. A great example of these connections is the 97th annual meeting this week of the Ecological Society of America, where almost forty faculty and students from UGA will present their work.

The Odum School of Ecology has the most attendees from UGA with 16 presenting at the meeting. They are among 38 from UGA who will lead sessions and present papers and posters on topics such as disease ecology, biogeochemistry, aquatic ecology, woody plants and ecosystem management.

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Other UGA colleges sending scientists include the Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources (13), the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences (five) and the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences (four).

In the public realm at least, biofuels have been on a bit of a roller coaster ride over the last 12-15 years, as their promise becomes mired in politics and regional agriculture issues. But in research labs across the country and at UGA, scientists have held steady.

A newly published genetic sequence and map of foxtail millet, a close relative of switchgrass and an important food crop in Asia, is giving scientists working to increase biofuel and crop yields a powerful new tool.

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Lead author Jeffrey Bennetzen, Giles Professor and Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar of genetics in the UGA Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, said the sequence and map will allow scientists to systematically search for genes that influence traits such as disease resistance, drought tolerance, growth rate and cell-wall composition. Once those genes are identified, breeders can develop crops that require less water or pesticides, for example, or develop plants that can be easily converted into biofuels.

Vincent van Gogh produced five versions of sunflowers in vases or bouqets, each subtly distinct from the others. Often accused of the dual curse of genius and madness, UGA scientists have confirmed that, though van Gogh may have had other struggles, inaccurate vision was not among them.

In a study published March 29 in the journal PLoS Genetics, however, a team of University of Georgia scientists reveals the mutation behind the distinctive, thick bands of yellow "double flowers" that the post-Impressionist artist painted more than 100 years ago.

"In addition to being of interest from a historical perspective, this finding gives us insight into the molecular basis of an economically important trait," said senior author John Burke, professor of plant biology in the UGA Franklin College of Arts and Sciences. "You often see ornamental varieties similar to the ones van Gogh painted growing in people's gardens or used for cut flowers, and there is a major market for them."

Since at least the 1970's, University of Georgia researchers and engineers have been working on the many different facets of developing renewable energy sources, from biodiesel to fermentation, soil sequestration and more. The many different avenues provided opportunities for crucial bench-scale breakthroughs that have allowed further related research to flourish. That progress continues today:

Researchers at the University of Georgia have taken a major step in the ongoing effort to find sources of cleaner, renewable energy by mapping the genomes of two originator cells of Miscanthus x giganteus, a large perennial grass with promise as a source of ethanol and bioenergy.

Evolutionary biology is the 10-meter spring board for some of the greatest questions in science and epidemiology. How do species arise? How do genes diversify and acquire new functions? How do pathogens evolve and how does that information lead to new and better understanding of diseases?