Archive for January, 2009

Though the role of transcription factor proteins in the evolution of gene expression has been largely overshadowed by that of cis-regulatory elements, changes in transcription factors may be much more important than previously assumed, said Yale professor Gunter Wagner in a lecture at DMS last Friday.

Dartmouth chemistry professor F. Jon Kull recently discovered a new function for NOD, a protein essential for chromosome segregation in meiosis cell division. The finding was published earlier this month in Cell.

Dartmouth College anthropology professor Seth Dobson recently found a correlation between group interaction and the use of facial expressions in nonhuman primates.

DMS researcher Murray Korc and a team at the University of Ulm discovered that Interleukin-13, an anti-inflammatory cytokine, exerts autocrine growth-promoting effects on human pancreatic cancer. The finding was published this month in International Journal of Colorectal Disease.

John A. Baron, a professor of Medicine and of Community and Family Medicine at Dartmouth Medical School, outlined the latest research findings about everyday activities and substances that can increase or decrease an individual’s vulnerability to adenomas.

Kim Williamson, professor of biology at Loyola University Chicago, spoke with Dartmouth students, faculty, and staff about recent developments in her studies concerning sexual and mosquito stages of the parasite Plasmodium falciparum, the most virulent form of human malaria.