Technological Breakthroughs Transform Biological Inquiry in Neuroscience

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The infinitely complex workings of the human brain have intrigued researchers for centuries. Our understanding of its workings have been limited, not by our curiosity, but by our tools. Now, with the growth of new molecular biology and genomics approaches, big data, and engineering advances that...

MCB Faculty Named Directors of LAS Graduate Programs

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Professor Satish Nair of the Department of Biochemistry has been appointed Director of the Center for Biophysics and Quantitative Biology. Professor Nair has been serving as Interim Director since November 2015. Professor Martha Gillette of the Department of Cell and Developmental Biology has been...

GPCRs Direct Germline Development and Somatic Gonad Function in Planarians

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G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) are the largest and most versatile family of cell-surface receptors. They play critical roles in various cellular and physiological systems and have emerged as a leading group of therapeutic targets. Due to their structural and functional conservation across...

University of Illinois awarded $8M from NIH to study nuclear structure

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Professor of Cell and Developmental Biology and Principal Investigator Andrew Belmont from the University of Illinois heads a team of Investigators that has been awarded an $8M grant over five years to study nuclear structure from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Common Fund as part of the...

Andrew Belmont: Influencing a generation of chromatin biology

As a postdoc studying chromosomal structure with David Agard and John Sedat in the late 1980s, Andrew Belmont had observed intriguing ultrastructural details in interphase nuclei. “We’d see large-scale fibers about 100 nanometers thick, and then there’d be a 10- to 30-nanometer-thick fiber looping...