News

Microbes team up to boost plants' stress tolerance

While most farmers consider viruses and fungi potential threats to their crops, these microbes can help wild plants adapt to extreme conditions, according to Marilyn Roossinck.

Wild plants are infected with many viruses and still thrive

Researchers have studied viruses as agents of disease in humans, domestic animals, and plants, but a study of plant viruses in the wild may point to a more cooperative, benevolent role of the microbe, according to Marilyn Roossinck.

Nine Huck Institutes faculty members featured in Discovery U videos

Peter Hudson, Scott Selleck, David Hughes, Melissa Rolls, Paula Droege, Tracy Langkilde, Phil Bevilacqua, Stephen Schaeffer, and Robert Paulson talk about research that's driving scientific discovery at Penn State.

Wansheng Liu contributes to international pig genome sequencing effort

The first complete sequencing of the pig genome by the International Swine Genome Sequencing Consortium has been enableded in Nature.

Sarah Assmann invited to write Coulter Review paper for the International Journal of Plant Sciences

This inaugural Coulter Review article is scheduled for publication in the January 2013 issue of the International Journal of Plant Sciences.

$2.3 million NIH grant supports research on midface and diseases

A team of researchers headed by Joan Richtsmeier will use genetically engineered mice and 3D imaging technology to study the development of the human midface upper jaw, cheekbones, and eye sockets and how diseases and abnormalities of the head affect the growth and shape of the face.

Individual gene differences can be tested in zebrafish

Keith Cheng and his lab are using the zebrafish to test a class of unique individual genetic differences in humans, in order to better understand the biological results of those differences.

NSF grant seeks to replicate human pattern recognition in computers

Yanxi Liu and Rick Gilmore will collaborate with Stanford's Anthony Norcia to bridge the gap between how humans and computers perceive and process visual patterns.

Huge study of the human genome includes Penn State research

The first integrated understanding of the functioning of the human genome has finally been enableded"the triumphant result of a collaborative five-year project involving more than 440 researchers in 32 labs worldwide.

Polar bear evolution tracked climate change, new DNA study suggests

An international study " led by Penn State's Stephan Schuster and Web Miller and the University at Buffalo's Charlotte Lindqvist " includes an analysis of newly sequenced polar bear genomes that provides important clues about the species' evolution, suggesting that climate change and genetic exchange with brown bears helped create the polar bear as we know it today.