Biology

Dr. Rou-Jia Sung has received NSF funding for a project to develop an augmented reality based app for iOS and Android devices as a tool for teaching macromolecular structure and function — think Pokemon Go, but with protein structures instead!

Biology professors Dan Hernández and Mark McKone are accepting applications for summer research assistants for summer 2019. The research will focus on various projects in the Carleton Arboretum on the ecology of prairie restoration, soil carbon and nutrient cycling, and the impacts of mammal herbivory on prairie communities.

Have you played Pokemon Go? Then you've used Augmented Reality (AR) technology! AR technology holds substantial promise and potential for providing a low-cost, easy to use digital platform for the manipulation of virtual 3D objects, including 3D models of biological macromolecules. BiochemAR is currently freely available for iOS on iPad and iPhone from the Apple store and for Android from Google Play. To learn more, read the article in The Scientist.

Senior biology major Kait Libbey was interviewed about her summer job working as a junior ranger educator at a San Francisco an environmental justice youth center funded by the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy.

Mike is an aquatic biologist with research interests that center on the interaction between organisms and their physical environment. His work primarily focuses on issues of ecophysiology and fluid mechanics related to marine/freshwater invertebrates, and involves a combination of lab, field, and modeling approaches. This includes the array of physiological, ecological, and developmental responses that organisms employ when faced with environmental uncertainty (e.g., changes temperature, salinity, fluid dynamics).

Rika has received NASA funding for a project to improve how scientists recognize whether an exoplanet can or does support life. Anderson’s work in "The Virtual Planetary Laboratory (VPL): Advancing the Search for Life Beyond the Solar System" project will contribute to NASA’s broader "Nexus for Exoplanet System Science (NExSS)" network. As a co-investigator with Victoria Meadows of the University of Washington-Seattle, Rika will examine the early evolution of microbial life on Earth. She will work with a Carleton undergraduate researcher on bioinformatics tasks over the course of the five-year grant, and attend the Astrobiology Science Conference every other year.

Stephan Zweifel published an article co-authored with Madeline Arnold ’14 and Drew Holman ’14 in the November/December issue of The American Biology Teacher titled, "Using Molecular Biology and Bioinformatics to Investigate the Prevalence of Mislabeled Fish Samples". The article is the result of an inquiry based laboratory exercise developed for the Carleton Summer Science Institute.

Assistant Professor of Biology, recently published a paper in the journal Nature Communications. The paper, "Genomic variation in microbial populations inhabiting the marine subseafloor at deep-sea hydrothermal vents," examines evolutionary dynamics of microbial communities inhabiting deep-sea hydrothermal vents.

In this new seminar, we will delve into the primary literature to explore fundamental questions about the origin and evolution of life: How did life arise on Earth? Where on Earth did life begin? What was the nature of our last universal common ancestor? How did life change the planet? Could life originate elsewhere in the cosmos?

Dan Hernández, Associate Professor of Biology, and Mark McKone, Towsley Professor of Biology, presented two talks at the annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America in Portland, Oregon in August. The titles were "Experimental community assembly with and without dominant grasses in tallgrass prairie: impact on higher trophic levels" presented by McKone; and "Experimental community assembly with and without dominant grasses in tallgrass prairie: biotic and abiotic effects on litter decomposition" presented by Hernández. The presentations described results from a long-term experiment in the Upper Arb prairies.

Roger Faust '19 works in the lab of Biology Professor Daniel Hernandez (Winter FOCUS 2020 cohort faculty mentor). Find out about Roger's experience in the lab and in the field!

A unique collaboration between Carleton professors Kim Smith and Dan Hernandez brought a new level of sophistication to how students are taught science and environmental studies.