A new research center at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign will create whole-cell models that promise to transform our understanding of how cells function. With cutting-edge imaging and simulation tools, the center will advance the study of healthy and diseased cells; accelerate research...

New research from Supriya Prasanth’s lab at the University of Illinois provides tremendous insight into the role of the smallest subunit of the human ORC, Orc6. Although the ORC is conserved in all eukaryotes, Orc6 is the most evolutionarily diverged. In a recent study published in PNAS, the...

The nervous system is made up of diverse cells that arise from progenitors in a specific time-dependent pattern. In a new study, published in Nature Communications, researchers have uncovered the molecular players involved and how the timing is controlled.

Embryonic stem cells and other pluripotent cells divide rapidly and have the capacity to become nearly any cell type in the body. Scientists have long sought to understand the signals that prompt stem cells to switch off pluripotency and adopt their final functional state.

In a study reported in the journal Chemical Science, researchers developed a new method to determine how antibiotics with specific chemical properties thread their way through tiny pores in the otherwise impenetrable cell envelopes of Gram-negative bacteria.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) announced a five-year, $12.5 million grant to integrate biology to a collaborative team based in the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The new institute, Genomics and Eco-evolution of Multi-scale...

Rhanor Gillette and his colleagues simulated a sea slug brain in a computer model, added a few extra circuits, and gave it access to food and an intoxicating drug. The work offers insight into the process of addiction and will be a useful tool for further studies, Gillette said.

Miniature biological robots are making greater strides than ever, thanks to the spinal cord directing their steps. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign researchers developed the tiny walking “spinobots,” powered by rat muscle and spinal cord tissue on a soft, 3D-printed hydrogel skeleton....

Gennis Lab: Researchers determined the structure of a supercomplex of enzymes many bacteria use to generate energy.

Rhanor Gillette and his colleagues built a virtual ocean predator that has simple self-awareness.