Recent News

The University of Michigan Biosciences Initiative is proud to announce the onboarding of Roland Kersten, Ph.D., as its first expert faculty hire.

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

The Life Sciences Institute is launching an annual series of public talks highlighting the importance of disseminating scientific findings beyond the walls of the academy. 

Alison Narayan, Ph.D., is one of only two researchers nationwide to be named both a 2019 Sloan Research Fellow and a 2019 Cottrell Scholar Award recipient. Taken together, these two awards illustrate Narayan’s passion for advancing bold, new approaches to  chemistry within her lab and within in undergraduate classrooms where she can help shape the next generation of innovative chemists.

Research writes new chapter in the story of fatty acid biosynthesis and its potential for new antibiotics and renewable resources

LSI faculty member Alison Narayan was one of three U-M professors to be named a 2019 Cottrell Scholar.

Researchers have solved the structure of a key protein that is over-activated in 90 percent of cases of uveal melanoma.

LSI faculty member Alison Narayan was one of three U-M professors to be named a 2019 Sloan Research Fellow.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.