Winter 2023
Food for a changing climate
Washington State University researchers adapt livestock and crops such as potatoes, apples, and wheat to feed a more crowded, warming planet. » More ...
Molecular Biology
Winter 2022
Touring the turfgrass
A tour of the Washington State University turfgrass research farm with director and plant biologist Michael Neff.
Listen to this episode of the magazine podcast, Viewscapes, on November 15.
Read more about plant biosciences research in “Just a small thing making a big difference.”
Winter 2020
Five questions with Jennifer Adair
A Washington State University alumna researches the cutting edge of cancer therapies at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. » More ...
Winter 2018
Pork futures
Pig 135 snuffles and grunts inside his pen. Jon Oatley reaches through the bars to pet the more than 500-pound genetically modified animal.
“People have this image in their head of a pig with deformities, but they’re just normal pigs,” says molecular biologist Oatley ’01 MS, ’04 PhD as he rubs the pig’s ears.
The enormous, three-year-old pig is one of a handful bred by Oatley, director of WSU’s Center for Reproductive Biology, and his team to be surrogate fathers. Through genetic tinkering, Pig 135 is able to produce sperm that contains the genetic material of another pig rather than his own. This … » More …
Spring 2018
Gaining on muscle loss
Cancer, says Dan Rodgers, is a hellish parade of horribleness.
Cancerous cells multiply aggressively, interfering with the normal function of healthy organs. Tumors secrete hormones and other chemicals that exploit the body’s own defenses to the cancer’s advantage. Your body knows something is wrong, so stress hormones are released in an effort to inhibit growth processes and channel nutrients to the brain.
Deprived of resources, muscles begin to atrophy. Washington State University muscle biologist Rodgers, together with colleagues at the Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute in Australia, investigated treatments for tumor-induced muscle wasting called cancer cachexia. The research was so promising that Rodgers … » More …
Summer 2017
Space farming
Surviving the challenges of deep space exploration could rely as much on botany as astrophysics.
NASA sees plants not only as potential food sources aboard future spacecraft but as natural oxygen producers. The space agency is preparing for its first in-depth study of how growth and development of plants is affected by gravity, or more specifically the lack of it.
“The overall significance is what it could mean for space exploration,” says Norman G. Lewis, a Regents professor at Washington State University’s Institute of Biological Chemistry and principal investigator for the NASA-funded study. “Whether it’s colonizing planets, establishing a station, … » More …
Summer 2017
On the surface…
Cancer, that malignant force that maims and kills as it rampages through bodies and lives, may have met its match in the person of James Wells ’79 PhD. Wells speaks quietly but with urgency. You have to lean in to not miss anything.
Wells is explaining that cancer’s derangement of our lives actually begins at the surface of individual cells. The complex chemical ecology of the cell membrane surface deserves its own term of art, so Wells dubs it the “surfaceome.” “The cell membrane is the eyes, ears, nose, and mouth of a cell,” he says.
Cancer cells, in order to avoid detection by the … » More …
Winter 2016
Video: Crawling skin
WSU molecular biologist Jonathan Jones discovered that skin cells “walk” during wound healing, a finding that could impact treatment options for injuries, skin cancer, and other disorders. Read more in “Your skin crawls.”
Watch skin cells move in this microscopic video.
Winter 2016
Your skin crawls
Skin.
Our interface with the world. When something goes wrong with skin, people notice. Scars, acne, a change in pigment. Wounds that refuse to heal and chronic conditions like psoriasis. When skin doesn’t behave properly, it hurts.
For over 25 years, molecular biologist Jonathan Jones has been looking for ways to help speed the epidermal healing process. As a child in Wales, he’d suffered from itchy red patches of eczema, an annoying condition that eventually got him thinking about skin in a scientific way. Recently, that interest paid off with the surprising discovery that skin cells “walk” during wound healing. The finding could provide new … » More …
Spring 2016
Leen Kawas is on a mission…
…to cure the disease that took her grandmother’s life.
A scientific discovery that could lead to treatments for Alzheimer’s and cancer drives biochemist and executive Leen Kawas. For her, it’s a personal and professional quest to develop that discovery into innovative, affordable drugs for the millions of people facing those diseases—a quest that started at seven years old, when her grandmother got cancer.
At 30, Kawas ’11 PhD is one of the youngest biotech CEOs in Seattle and, as a woman from Jordan, one of the most diverse. In her first year at the helm of M3 Biotechnology, her small but … » More …