Vanderbilt University Department of Biological Sciences

📢 DEFENSE ANNOUNCEMENT! 📢 We are excited to share that Ph.D. Candidate, Carl Stone, will be defending on Tuesday, February 17. Carl’s defense will be held at 1:00 PM on 2/17/2026 in SC 4309.

📢 DEFENSE ANNOUNCEMENT! 📢
We are excited to share that Ph.D. candidate, Jake Hermanson, will be defending next week! Jake’s defense will be held on Monday, February 9 at 12:30 PM in Buttrick Hall, room 101.

As it turns out, the “Kathy” gene 🧬 is the dominant gene in the Friedman Lab! Friedman Lab members dressed up as various iterations of their PI, Professor Kathy Friedman, for the GSA halloween contest this year! 🎃

A big thanks to for giving the BioSci admin team a tree tour on this lovely fall day! 🍂

All human cells require large protein coat complexes to coordinate the transport of fatty lipid and protein molecules required for human brain health, similar to how FedEx and UPS ensure our packages are delivered to the correct address.
New research from Associate Professor of Biological Sciences Lauren Jackson’s Lab has uncovered how those individual proteins interact, and how those interactions may cause brain diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

Funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and led by Research Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences Mintu Chandra, the team analyzed the protein complex retromer and its interactions with sorting nexins.

Learn more about the research, its connection to brain disease, and the team’s next steps. ⬇

https://as.vanderbilt.edu/news/2025/03/05/jackson-lab-reveals-relationship-between-transport-proteins-and-brain-disease/

Vanderbilt University Department of Biological Sciences

The BioSci Office will be closed Monday, December 23, 2024 – Wednesday, January 1, 2025 for Winter Break. We will reopen on Thursday, January 2, 2025. We hope everyone has a relaxing Winter Break!

BioSci Holiday Party 2024! We had such a great time celebrating with all of the faculty, postdocs, staff, and students who were able to make it out for our annual holiday party! A special congratulations to the Jackson Lab for winning the best decorated door contest! Stay tuned for a very special post to celebrate their victory!

We’d like to our Program Specialist, Torria, a very happy 60th birthday! We enjoyed celebrating with you on your milestone birthday! 🎂 🎉🎈

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New research led by recent Vanderbilt Ph.D. alumna Maria Luísa Jabbur from the Johnson Lab has uncovered that even cyanobacteria—tiny organisms with a generation time of just five to six hours—can sense and respond to changes in light availability, or photoperiod, to gear up for winter.

The new paper, “Bacteria can anticipate the seasons: Photoperiodism in cyanobacteria,” was published in Science earlier this month.

Understanding the evolution of these bacteria to anticipate seasonality may help us better understand things like harmful cyanobacterial blooms and the effects of climate change. Blooms are often attributed to local conditions like temperature and nutrient availability; however, this may also be a seasonal, anticipatory response.

In additional to Jabbur, Carl Johnson, Cornelius Vanderbilt Professor of Biological Sciences, and Benjamin Bratton, assistant professor of pathology, microbiology, and immunology, co-authored the paper. Jabbur is currently a research fellow at the John Innes Centre. Read more ⬇

https://www.vanderbilt.edu/evolution/researchers-discover-the-evolution-of-seasonal-anticipation-in-cyanobacteria

Vanderbilt University Department of Biological Sciences

MRB III

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Congrats to Lars Plate, associate professor of chemistry and biological sciences, and the Plate Research Group on receiving a $500,000 U.S. Department of Agriculture National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility grant to further their research on the viral infection foot-and-mouth disease. Their newest work will look into the different strains and host-species adaptations making cattle and pigs sick. They hope to gain insights that will help with developing new and more effective strategies to protect livestock.

Ph.D. student and lab member Molly Sullivan was also awarded a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship for her work on how viruses adapt to host species by introducing silent mutations, which she’ll be exploring under the larger project.

Vanderbilt University Chemistry Department
Vanderbilt University Department of Biological Sciences