To request a media interview, please reach out to School of Biological Sciences experts using our faculty directory, or contact Jess Hunt-Ralston, College of Sciences communications director. A list of faculty experts and research areas across the College of Sciences at Georgia Tech is also available to journalists upon request.
The updated COVID-19 booster shot that targets two omicron subvariants as well as the original coronavirus strain has been available to most Americans for more than four months, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says just 18% of adults have gotten it. Despite COVID deaths in the U.S. once again being on the rise, the months-long booster campaign appears to have an education problem, according to a report published Thursday by the CDC. The most common reason given for not getting the booster shot was a lack of knowledge about eligibility for it, followed by a lack of knowledge about vaccine availability, and a perceived belief that they were already protected against infection. Two School of Biological Sciences,researchers were involved in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR): Joshua Weitz, professor, Tom and Marie Patton Chair, Co-Director of the Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Quantitative Biosciences, and Blaise Pascal International Chair of Excellence at the Ecole Normale Superieure; and Stephen Beckett, research scientist. (The CDC report is also mentioned in this story by the Los Angeles Times.)
Survey Finds Americans Still Don’t Know They’re Eligible for Updated COVID-19 Booster Shot | 2023-01-19T00:00:00-05:00
Peatlands store a significant amount of the Earth’s carbon and have functioned as an important moderator of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere for thousands of years. But as peatlands are lost to overextraction and affected by a warmer climate, the impact on these natural carbon scrubbers remains unclear. A team of researchers from Florida State University, Georgia Institute of Technology, Oak Ridge National Lab and the University of Arizona received a $3.2 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to investigate the status of carbon stored in peatlands, environments that are at risk of carbon release due to climate change. The Georgia Tech researchers include Joel Kostka, professor in the School of Biological Sciences and School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences; Kostas Konstantinidis, Richard C. Tucker Professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Ocean Science and Engineering interdisciplinary graduate program; and Caitlin Petro, research scientist, and Katherine Duchesneau, doctoral student, both with the School of Biological Sciences. (Here's how the College of Sciences covered this story in October 2022.)
FSU climate scientists receive Department of Energy funding to study greenhouse gas emissions from peatlands | 2023-01-19T00:00:00-05:00
A new paper in Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health, published by Oxford University Press, indicates that antibiotic resistance may result from poor hygiene practices in hospitals or other medical facilities. Researchers addressed whether hygiene weakens the effect of antibiotic pressure on resistance evolution. The authors first developed a mathematical model of resistance to predict how good or poor hygiene might affect how rapidly resistant bacteria increase in abundance due to antibiotic treatment. Kristofer Wollein Waldetoft, a postdoctoral researcher with the Center for Microbial Dynamics and Infection (CMDI) in the School of Biological Sciences, and Sam Brown, professor in the School and former CMDI director, collaborated on the research.
How clean hospitals can reduce antibiotic resistance and save lives | 2023-01-17T00:00:00-05:00
While the term doesn’t officially exist yet, a group of American researchers have discovered two groups of microorganisms that are neither animals, nor plants, nor fungi – but neither are they simple bacteria. While they are not the first virus-eating organisms to have been identified, they are apparently able to survive and thrive exclusively by feeding on viral material. The researchers have been studying viruses from a different perspective: not as pathogenic biological entities, but rather, as basic nutrients in the life cycle. One of those researchers is Joshua Weitz, Professor and Tom and Marie Patton Chair in the School of Biological Sciences, Co-Director of the Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Quantitative Biosciences, and Blaise Pascal International Chair of Excellence at the Ecole Normale Superieure.
Virivores, the organism can eat up to a million viruses a day | 2023-01-12T00:00:00-05:00
Understanding protein interactions is key to innumerable fields — including, notably, drug design. Now, researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a machine learning tool to predict interactions between multiple proteins, paving the way for easier identification of drug targets for antibiotics and therapeutics. The open-source, publicly available tool is called AF2Complex — short for AlphaFold 2 Complex, since the tool is built on top of London-based artificial intelligence lab DeepMind’s AlphaFold 2 protein structure prediction program. Jeffrey Skolnick, Regents' Professor and Mary and Maisie Gibson Chair in the School of Biological Sciences, and Mu Gao, senior research scientist, are co-authors of the study.
Summit Supercomputer, Deep Learning Power Protein Interaction Prediction | 2023-01-09T00:00:00-05:00
Cats always land on their feet, but what makes them so agile? Their unique sense of balance has more in common with humans than it may appear. Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology are studying cat locomotion to better understand how the spinal cord works to help humans with partial spinal cord damage walk and maintain balance. Georgia Tech partnered with researchers at the University of Sherbrooke in Canada and Drexel University in Philadelphia to better understand how signals from sensory neurons coordinate movements of a cat's legs. Leading the Georgia Tech research team is Boris Prilutsky, professor in the School of Biological Sciences. (This research was also covered in The Medical Republic.)
Cat locomotion could unlock better human spinal cord injury treatment | 2023-01-09T00:00:00-05:00
Skipping a stone across water requires skill and patience and, of course, a great stone. Personal preference may send you to a flat, light one, which seems to skip easier. But scientists have found that is not the only way to get impressive leaps. A recent University of Bristol study researched how shape and mass affect the way objects interact with water. And it found that a heavier rock with a good curve — imagine the shape of a mango but smaller — can get an impressive bounce. David Hu, a professor with the School of Biological Sciences and the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, and an adjunct professor in the School of Physics, did not take part in the study but comments on how surprised he was that the Bristol scientists studied curved objects.
Heavier, curvy stones can give surprising results in skipping, physicists say | 2023-01-05T00:00:00-05:00
The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) awarded the University of Maryland a six-year, $505,000 grant to continue UMD’s work toward the inclusion of all students in science through HHMI’s Inclusive Excellence 3 (IE3) initiative. HHMI awarded IE3 grants totaling more than $60 million over six years to collaborate on strategies for creating more welcoming, inclusive learning experiences for students pursuing degrees in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). HHMI reviewed 354 proposals and awarded grants to 104 schools, dividing them into seven Learning Community Clusters, or LCCs. Georgia Tech is included in the University of Maryland's LLC. Lewis Wheaton, associate professor in the School of Biological Sciences and Director of the Center for Promoting Inclusion and Equity in the Sciences (C-PIES); Carrie Shepler, principal academic professional in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry and Assistant Dean for Teaching Effectiveness in the College of Sciences; Jennifer Leavey, principal academic professional in the School of Biological Sciences and Assistant Dean for Faculty Mentoring in the College of Sciences; and David Collard, professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry and Senior Associate Dean in the College of Sciences led this grant initiative for Georgia Tech.
Howard Hughes Medical Institute Grant to Support Inclusive Science Education | 2023-01-05T00:00:00-05:00
Over the past two years, artificial intelligence has shown it can predict what many cellular components look like. For instance, the AlphaFold deep-learning tool developed by Google sister company DeepMind has decoded how nearly every amino acid sequence folds into defined shapes. With a grant of computing time from the U.S. Department of Energy's Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) Leadership Computing Challenge, a team led by Jeffrey Skolnick, Regents' Professor, Mary and Maisie Gibson Chair & GRA Eminent Scholar in Computational Systems Biology in the School of Biological Sciences, is extending that work to unfurl how those proteins interact and form complex, working structures in living systems. More details on this development can be found at the College of Sciences News Center here.
Computing function from form | 2023-01-04T00:00:00-05:00
Many of us feel tethered to our water bottles because we've been told that being hydrated is key to being healthy. NPR's Life Kit and Short Wave colleagues teamed up to talk about what science says about hydrating. Turns out much of the lore is due for an update. Example: drinking eight glasses of water a day is good for you. That actually depends on body size and activity level. But Mindy Millard-Stafford, professor in the School of Biological Sciences and director of Georgia Tech's Exercise Physiology Lab, says even mild dehydration, or a two percent loss of water, can impact the brain's executive functions and ability to pay sustained attention.
Encore: How much water do you actually need? Here's the science | 2023-01-02T00:00:00-05:00
