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News from 2019

Investigating How Sharks and Skates Sense Electric Fields [Bellono Lab]

Sensory systems evolve to detect and transduce stimuli that are most relevant to an animal’s physiological or behavioral context. Ancient cartilaginous fishes, such as sharks, skates, and rays,…

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Doeke Hekstra Chosen as Searle Scholar

MCB and SEAS assistant professor Doeke Hekstra has been chosen as a 2018 Searle Scholar. Each year, the Searles Scholar Program--administered by the Kinship Foundation and funded by…

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Believing in Dopamine [Uchida Lab]

Predicting future rewards depends critically on beliefs about the current state of the world. For example, suppose you go to a restaurant with two chefs, one who you’ve…

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Hopi Hoekstra Elected to American Philosophical Society

Professor Hopi Hoekstra, a faculty member with a joint appointment to the MCB and OEB departments, has been elected to the prestigious American Philosophical Society (APS). Hoekstra is…

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In the Olfactory Bulb, Being Normal Goes Against the Norm [Murthy Lab]

Perhaps the first lesson that we learn in any neuroscience course involves defining the unique properties of neurons. Neurons, we learn, are polarised entities where information flows from…

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Jennifer Doudna to Give 2018 Prather Lectures, May 15, 16, 17

Jennifer Doudna will give the 2018 John M. Prather Lectures in Biology.  Doudna is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator and the Li Ka Shing Chancellor's Professor in…

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Feeling the Heat – How Does the Zebrafish Brain Process Temperature? [Engert- and Schier Labs]

The Engert and Schier labs address in a recent paper in Neuron (PDF) how larval zebrafish senses temperature and transforms the sensory representation to generate behavior with the ultimate…

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Tom Maniatis to Deliver John T. Edsall Lecture

Tom Maniatis is the Isidore S. Edelman Professor and Chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular biophysics at the Columbia University Medical Center. He was recently named…

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Branching Out: Reconstructing Embryonic Fate Decisions [Schier Lab]

What are the molecular trajectories that embryonic cells go through as they become specialized? In a study in Science (PDF) the Schier lab combines single-cell RNA-sequencing with a novel…

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Smelling Complexity [ Murthy Lab]

You walk into a restaurant and immediately become aware of all the smells coming from the kitchen. These scents arise from small, volatile molecules called odorants. While there…

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