News
Find out the latest news, announcements and stories about Biology at ANU.
- News
The Australian National University (ANU) Research School of Biology has awarded the inaugural Ralph Slatyer Medal for outstanding biological research to Professor Mark Westoby from Macquarie University.
- RSB 50th Anniversary
In 2000, Mandyam V. Srinivasan and colleagues showed that honeybees use the optical bypassing of the environment to measure distance. Srinivasan’s group trained bees to fly to food though a 6m tunnel lined with optical patterns. The bees overestimated the distance, communicating to other bees a distance of 200m.
- RSB 50th Anniversary
In 2015, for modelling photosynthesis, the world’s most important biological reaction, Graham Farquhar won the Prime Minister’s Prize for Science.
- RSB 50th Anniversary
Hartnup disorder is a rare disorder that is caused by an inability to absorb the breakdown products of protein digestion, namely amino acids. In 2004, Stefan Bröer’s group discovered the gene that is mutated in Hartnup disorder, a transporter that mediates the absorption of amino acids in the intestine and kidney.
- RSB 50th Anniversary
In 1973, Lynn Dalgarno, from the ANU Department of Biochemistry, and his PhD student John Shine, proposed an initiating signal for protein synthesis in prokaryotic cells. This ribosomal binding site in bacterial messenger RNA became known as the Shine-Dalgarno (SD) sequence.
- RSB 50th Anniversary
Konzo is a neurological disease that causes irreversible paralysis of the legs, often in women and young children. It's caused by malnutrition and consumption of high levels of a cyanide compound found in the cassava plant - which happens to be a common staple food in tropical Africa.
- News
Crabs that invade smaller crab species’ habitat overpower and evict incumbents from their burrows, but the two species ultimately co-exist and join forces against other invading crabs
- News
January is not normally thought of as a teaching-heavy month, but RSB members were involved in a number of outreach events early this year.
- RSB 50th Anniversary
The snake crown is the result of the 2015/16 collaboration between Professor Scott Keogh, herpetologist and Head of The Division of Ecology and Evolution at RSB, and Dr Steven Holland from the ANU School of Art, as part of the Vice-Chancellor’s College Artist Fellows Scheme.
- Student profile
Genetic modification can be a prickly subject to raise at the dinner table, but not if you are Hannah Osborn.
- Student profile
Honours student Tze How Goh, enriches his studies by researching diabetes treatments.