When Carlo Maley first delved into his studies on the evolution of disease, he was struck with how little the field had been explored. He decided that his skills in evolution and computational biology would be well-suited for the job. “I went to PubMed and looked for all papers that had both cancer and evolution in the title … and I only came up with a handful of hits. It became clear that evolution is fundamental to the basic science of cancer, which explains why people have such a...

Five students affiliated with Arizona State University’s Biodesign Institute are the first recipients of the new Biodesign Student Travel Grant. The funding for this program was received from ASU Sun Devil Giving Day, a university-wide event in which Sun Devils from campus and all over the world are invited to show support for the university by engaging in online giving. Supporting students as they travel to career-building conferences is just one way to participate in 2018’s Sun Devil...

To make the iconic, twisted double helix that accounts for the diversity of life, DNA rules specify that G always pairs with C, and A with T. But, when it’s all added up, the amount of G+C vs A+T content among species is not a simple fixed percentage or, standard one-to-one ratio. For example, within single-celled organisms, the amount of G+C content can vary from 72 percent in a bacteria like Streptomyces coelicolor while the protozoan parasite that causes malaria, Plasmondium falciparum,...

Biodesign C, the $120 million building expansion of the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University, continues to rise along Rural Road at ASU’s Tempe campus. Much of the building is now in place ahead of an April 2018 completion date. Biodesign staff recently toured the construction site for a sneak peek at the progress, and the project architects explained the building’s layout, infrastructure and appearance at a seminar in November. It is the third building at ASU’s 14-acre...

Presented by Will Ratcliff, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Biological Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology. The origin of multicellularity was one of the most significant innovations in the history of life. Our understanding of the evolutionary processes underlying this transition remains limited, however, mainly because extant multicellular lineages are ancient and most transitional forms have been lost to...

Non-inherited, chance mutations may also provide a new window into understanding human disease  It’s biology’s version of the whisper game.  Inside a cell, every DNA phrase or sentence that makes a protein, known as a gene, first must be precisely copied, to ensure its instructions can properly build the foundation of life. But much like children tasked in the game with faithfully whispering a phrase to one another, each time, there is the possibility of introducing errors...

Presented by Caiti Heil, Ph.D., Senior Fellow University of Washington, Genome Sciences Department Caiti Heil explores the evolutionary processes that create and maintain genetic variation, most recently, investigating how hybridization between different populations or species represents a potential evolutionary pathway for rapid adaptation to selective pressures. When two divergent genomes merge, new combinations of alleles are introduced simultaneously, acting as an instantaneous and...

Presented by Kerry Geiler-Samerotte, Ph.D., Postdoctoral Fellow, Stanford University Identical genetic changes do not always have identical effects on phenotype. Because organisms are composed of interacting parts, the effect of perturbing any one part can offset or magnify perturbations to others, resulting in mutations with context-dependent effects on function. A major goal of the genomic age is to make predictions from genetic data about important and diverse topics, such as whether a...

Human populations feature a broad palette of skin tones. But until now, few genes have been shown to contribute to normal variation in skin color, and these had primarily been discovered through studies of European populations. Now, a study of diverse African groups led by University of Pennsylvania geneticists Sarah Tishkoff and Nicholas Crawford, with key contributions from new Arizona State University School of Life Sciences faculty Susanne Pfeifer and Jeff Jensen, has identified new...

Cross-disciplinary center studies key forces behind evolution to empower life sciences The Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University has announced today the appointment of world-renowned evolutionary biologist Michael Lynch, Ph.D., as the director of an ambitious new effort to advance the u­nderstanding of evolution across all scales of life, from whole populations to the key forces at work deep within a cell. The overarching mission of Lynch’s new Biodesign Center for Mechanisms...