News

Senior Research Scientist Frederick Khachik is one of the 2009 recipients of an Astellas Award from the American Chemical Society. The awards, funded by the Astellas USA Foundation, are given to individuals or teams who have made significant scientific research contributions that improved public health through their work in the chemical and related sciences. The award includes a $30,000 grant to support the recipient's continuing research program. 

A special edition of NatureNews "Biodiversity in Crisis" features the story "Biodiversity's Bright Spot" about the strides that conservationists in Brazil have made towards saving the golden lion tamarin and its forest habitat from destruction. The article highlights the decades of work by Biology Professor Jim Dietz to study the behavioral ecology of golden and golden-headed lion tamarins in southeastern Brazil and to preserve their habitat. His research on the evolution of monogamy and helping behavior in this communally breeding primate forms an integral part of an international project targeting the conservation of this endangered species and the biodiversity in its ecosystem.

Associate Professor Eric Haag, Department of Biology, is quoted in a NatureNews story "Biologists turn against worm." Haag studies the developmental genetics of evolutionary change using the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans as a model system. This worm has been one of the most important biological model systems for more than 30 years, but now Haag and others are using other species to gain insight into the origins of complex biological traits.

Researchers at the University of Maryland are using the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, as a model system to unravel what genes and gene pathways are involved in the metabolic changes that lead to insulin resistance and full-blown diabetes in humans. In research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (November 2, 2009), Leslie Pick, associate professor, Department of Entomology, and colleagues describe how they altered genes in fruit flies to model the loss of insulin production, as seen in human Type 1 diabetes. "We can use these genetically manipulated flies as a model to understand defects underlying human diabetes and to identify genes and target points for pharmacological intervention," suggests Dr. Pick, who is also using flies to study Type 2 diabetes and other syndromes of insulin resistance.

An innovative proposal by the Ecuadorian government to protect an untouched, oil rich region of Amazon rainforest is a precedent-setting and potentially economically viable approach, says a team of environmental researchers from the University of Maryland, the World Resources Institute and Save America's Forests. "This is a really novel approach that could fund a lot of rainforest protection," said Clinton Jenkins, a research scientist in the University of Maryland's department of biology. "It's also an innovative way of dealing with greenhouse gas emissions."