Recent News

LSI Outreach Awards recognize the value of our community members' efforts to connect research, teaching and service to the public

Four teams of graduate students and postdoctoral fellows will soon launch their own cross-lab, interdisciplinary projects, with funding from the LSI Cubed program.

The University of Michigan Life Sciences Institute will lead a five-day cryo-electron microscopy workshop in June to introduce participants to common image processing software packages.

Researchers have identified a hormone produced by the liver that tells the body to downshift its metabolism when it’s expending a lot of energy, revealing a potential target for treating metabolic disorders.

Research from the LSI has uncovered a cause of declining motor function and increase frailty in tiny aging worms — and a way to slow it down.

Fifteen researchers at the University of Michigan — including two from the Life Sciences Institute — have been named fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, an honor bestowed upon AAAS members by their peers.

LSI staffer Majd Abdulghani was named first Rhodes Scholar for Saudi Arabia. 

U-M researchers have shed new light on the mechanisms by which stem cells permanently shed their identity to become new types of cells.

Three ground-breaking LSI projects are among the University of Michigan projects to be funded in the first round of investments from the Biosciences Initiative.

LSI researchers are part of a new, federally funded effort to understand and prevent toxic algal blooms that plague portions of the Great Lakes and impact freshwater sources around the world.

When Kärt Tomberg joined the Ginsburg lab at the LSI, she planned to identify the genetic factors that play a role in a fatal blood clotting disease. Now, the culmination of that project is featured in the September 2018 issue of PLOS Genetics, not just as a research study, but as art.

Recently, scientific leaders in the single-cell field gathered at the University of Michigan for the 2018 Saltiel Life Sciences Symposium, to discuss how their labs are developing and harnessing new technologies to answer questions about cellular identity and to highlight the immense power of single cell analyses.

Not every molecular biologist would think to look in cone snail venom for potential therapeutics. But a long-held interest in his surrounding biological environment — and a habit of making unconventional choices — led Baldomero “Toto” Olivera to do just that.

Cancer cells and healthy cells both employ the same set of molecular “scissors” to travel through tissues within the body — but they do so using very different processes, according to new findings from the University of Michigan.

Puck Ohi, Ph.D., describes his lab’s work to understand how motor proteins organize microtubules within the cell, and how those proteins processes could be used to stop cell division in cancer.

The U-M Life Sciences Institute has launched the Aspirnaut Summer Research Internship Program, a six-week, immersive program providing students with hands-on research experience in state-of-the-art labs.

A team of U-M researchers has found that two paralog genes — which can lead to two very different diseases — are functionally nearly identical. The findings indicate that one gene could be harnessed to help treat the disease associated with the other.

Scientists revealed that a receptor protein in the brain acts as the body’s “energy rheostat,” ensuring that the balance of energy and fat does not drift too far above or below its homeostatic set point. The findings open new doors for developing anti-obesity drugs.

Researchers have determined how to target a class of proteins that have long been considered too “fuzzy” to target with small molecules, opening the door to new drug-discovery projects.

With funding from the U-M College of Engineering's Blue Sky Initiative, a team of researchers is setting out to streamline the process for developing the next generation of antimicrobials.

Scientists uncover a potential new role for long noncoding RNA in obesity and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.

Meet the new MLSF fellows, who are investigating important biological questions related to multiple sclerosis, triple-negative breast cancer, and how complex living architectures form.

When scientists discover a new phenomenon, they often get to name it. For researchers who study the model system Drosophila melanogaster, or fruit flies, that means participating in a long tradition that is a hallmark of the field’s culture.

Researchers shed new light on a fundamental cellular process — the formation of asters, star-shaped microtubule structures within cells that help cells to divide properly.

New research reveals the mechanism that one model organism uses to signal to neighboring cells when it’s time to move.