News

With prices down and weather patterns unpredictable, these are tough times for America's cotton farmers, but new research led by Z. Jeffrey Chen at The University of Texas at Austin might offer a break for the industry. He and a team have taken the first step toward a new way of breeding heartier, more productive cotton through a process called epigenetic modification.

Students have selected Jessie Zhang, an associate professor of molecular biosciences, as The University of Texas at Austin's Professor of the Year. 

With funding from the highly competitive Human Frontier Science Program, an international team including The University of Texas at Austin's Andrew Ellington plans to unravel billions of years of evolution to create an ancient version of a cell. 

Have you ever wondered how your data is protected when you shop online, who engineered the antibodies that will treat victims of any future anthrax attacks, or whether the Deepwater Horizon spill affects the fish you eat?

Robed in tie-dye lab coat, graduate student Norah Ashoura meticulously guides her pipette while explaining what Star Wars has to do with the innovative research into cancer treatments coming from the George Georgiou lab group.

Just as the fossil record reveals clues about the conditions in which prehistoric animals and plants once lived, newly discovered genetic signatures in bacterial evolution may one day allow hospitals, doctors and scientists to know more about the environment where a bacterial infection originated.

George Georgiou, a professor of engineering and molecular biosciences at the University of Texas at Austin, and his colleagues have developed a hybrid antibody that neutralized 99 percent of HIV-1 strains tested. The antibody is based on so-called "broadly-neutralizing antibodies," a group of antibodies from HIV-infected patients that are able to take down an array of rapidly mutating HIV-1 viruses.

Earlier this year, the nation launched what's been called the Cancer Moonshot initiative—a monumental new effort to boost cancer research in pursuit of a cure. In the months leading up to this new initiative—and in the months since—faculty scientists, alumni and students brought many causes for hope to the fight against cancer.

A research team led by scientists at The University of Texas Austin has engineered an enzyme that safely treats prostate and breast cancer in animals and also lengthens the lifespan of models that develop chronic lymphocytic leukemia. The new treatment and results from preclinical trials are described in a paper published in the Nov. 21 issue of Nature Medicine.

For healthy cells to become cancerous cells, they have to lose several systems that regulate healthy function such as cell growth and division and DNA repair. New findings from University of Texas at Austin researchers about how one such regulatory system works could aid in efforts to develop personalized treatments for cancer.