On the surface, humans and flies may seem to have very different embryonic development; while it takes nine months for one human baby to develop, hundreds of fly eggs can hatch in the incubation period of only 24 hours. But, in both species, the undifferentiated embryo separates at some point to become different segments and appendages to the body. The molecules that trigger these differentiating genes are called morphogens, and each species has hundreds to thousands of them in its genome. William Stateman ’10 is trying to identify the effects of one specific morphogen on embryos of fruit flies. More ...

Assistant Professor of Chemistry Adam Van Wynsberghe has published an invited commentary titled “Conservation and Variation of Structural Flexibility in Protein Families” in the March issue of Structure, a leading biophysical chemistry and structural biology journal. The article gives a perspective of and general introduction to a feature article in the same issue of the journal and was written in collaboration with Professor Qiang Cui at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. More ...