On a beautiful September Sunday, hundreds of bicyclists pedaled the roads of eastern Dane County on The Ride to raise money for cancer research. This weekend, their fundraising came home to support cancer research at the University of …
The Director’s Cut: Heidi Dvinge Looks at RNA Splicing With a Film Critic’s Eye
After filming a movie, scenes are cut and rearranged to tell the director’s story. A similar editorial process occurs in our cells in a process called RNA splicing. Before the DNA code is translated into …
Metabolism Scientist Wins Prestigious AAAS Fellowship
For Danielle Lohman, her passion for science policy began when she heard a Ph.D. chemist speak at a career conference about the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) fellowship at the State Department in Washington, …
Simcox Joins Biochemistry to Study Lipid Signaling, Cold Exposure as IPiB’s Newest Faculty Member
In high school, Judith Simcox pored over scientific literature to try to understand the link between her sister’s Down Syndrome and type 1 diabetes. It was the first time she asked a question that didn’t …
New Biosensor Highlights Best Biofuel-producing Microbes
In search of the best biofuel-producing microbes, scientists may need to make millions of variants via genetic modifications. But only a handful of these variants are likely to produce large amounts of biofuel. To identify …
Conserving Helium, a Scarce Nonrenewable Resource, and Reducing Costs at NMR Facility
The National Magnetic Resonance Facility at Madison (NMRFAM) housed in the UW–Madison Department of Biochemistry is home to state-of-the-art technology for biomolecular nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy and related techniques. The facility’s equipment requires helium, and with …
Ancient Gene Duplication Gave Grasses Multiple Ways to Wait out Winter
If you’ve ever grown carrots in your garden and puzzled over never once seeing them flower, don’t blame a missing green thumb. Carrots, beets and many other plants won’t flower until they’ve gone through winter. …
Scientists Provide New Insight on How Gene Expression is Controlled
New research on transcriptional pausing, which helps control gene expression in cells, will aid in the understanding of the enzyme RNA polymerase — a key player in the process and an important drug target. The lab …
IPiB Welcomes New Student Services Coordinator
The Integrated Program in Biochemistry (IPiB) welcomed Maria S. Katsoulidis as its new student services coordinator in late 2018. She brings more than 15 years of experience in higher education administration and recruiting to the …
Chasing the Tail: Biochemists Zone in on Bacterial Transporter’s Tip as its Secret to Antibiotic Resistance
Nutrients in. Waste out. Everyone and almost every living thing does it, even at the cellular level. It seems like a simple enough concept: to survive, cells have to have a way to move different …