Department of Biology

Feeding worker and queen

Social evolution: honey bee nurse workers rear larvae as either new queens or new workers

Larix siberica

Siberian Larch, taken at our field site near Lake Khovsgol in north-central Mongolia. We are analyzing tree-ring width and stable isotopes of the tree rings to reconstruct climate, and Larch responses to climate change, over the past century as the temperature in Mongolia has risen.

Behavior

Baboon mother and offspring cross a flood plain in the Okavango Delta, Botswana

Social evolution

Social sharing of liquid food between ant nestmates ©Alexander Wild

Arabidopsis

Wild-type and transgenic Arabidopsis plants expressing miR156, a microRNA that promotes juvenility and increases the rate of leaf initiation

Bacterial Microcolonies

Cell-to-cell variability of Vibrio choerae expressing green fluorescent protein from a flagellar promoter.

Escherichia coli

Escherichia coli cells with fluorescently labeled chromosomal loci.

Malaria parasites

Malaria parasites (and their kin) can be viewed as minimal eukaryotes, harboring a nucleus (yellow), a secretory pathway the Golgi (purple) and specialized ‘rhotpry’ organelle (black), and two endosymbiotic organelles, the mitochondrion (red) and apicoplast (green).

News

Dr. Shelley Berger has been elected as a Fellow to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

May 3, 2013
Dr. Paul Sniegowski has been promoted to Professor of Biology.

May 3, 2013

More News »

Highlights

Ted Abel

Brush Family Professor of Biology

The primary focus of research in the Abel lab is to understand the cellular and molecular mechanisms of long-term memory storage with a focus on the mammalian hippocampus. One of the hallmarks of long-term memory storage is that it requires the synthesis of new genes and new proteins, which act to alter the strength of synaptic connections within appropriate neuronal circuits in the brain.