BIO5 Research Faculty

  • Discovering What’s Normal as Memory Slips with Age  

    Carol Barnes has been shaking up brain-related research for nearly 30 years, and she has lots more on her agenda. When she jumped into the neuroscience field—or was drawn in, actually—in 1971, it was much smaller, attracted a fraction of the billions in current annual funding and lacked the new sense of national urgency.

  • Jennifer Barton: Using Light to Detect Pre-Cancerous Cells  

    Early detection is the single most important factor in cancer survival. That's why regular checkups and early testing are so necessary.
    Unfortunately, current testing methodologies have limitations that prevent very early cancer detection.

  • An Ambassador for Statistics in the World of Bioscience  

    In the new biology, it’s not about the mountains of numbers, says Dean Billheimer, it’s whether they mean exactly what you think they mean.

  • Scott Boitano: Lung-Cell Signaling - A Life-Saving System in Peril  

    Dig deep into lung diseases, beyond the classic causes like cigarettes and working in a coal mine, and you'll come upon a few ancient hazards always in our air, water and dirt.

  • Leslie Boyer: Antivenom for Scorpion Stings  

    After a scorpion stings your bare foot (Ouch!), venom quickly takes.

    And no one in the world of bioscience can feel your pain like Leslie Boyer.
    'Your nerves fire away. Your muscles contract, and you jerk and twitch and dance around,' says Boyer, who is recognized as the top expert on clinical research on the subject.

  • Vicki Chandler: Quiet Down Over There! The New Science of Silencing Genes  

    From grade school, we learned in biology how we inherit blue or brown eyes. Simple as A B C. It's that blue or brown-eyes gene, part of a recipe called DNA in our cells.

  • Pierre Deymier: Building a Computer in a Cell  

    How can you build a computer in a cell, or a group of cells? Nature did it, and the brain is one result. Engineers who know some biology might also find a way.

    At The University of Arizona (UA), Pierre Deymier is giving it a try. In a major breakthrough in bioengineering, he uses tools he finds within living cells, mainly special kinds of proteins, and turns the proteins into hardware. He calls them Proteoware. 'It's my own word,' he says. 'I don't know if it will catch on.'

  • Tom Doetschman: Mice as Mirrors of What Ails Us  

    For most bioscientists, a slice of Nobel Prize fame would be a very big deal. For Tom Doetschman of The University of Arizona (UA), it is minor compared to his new goal: helping prevent colon cancer.

  • Bentley Fane: How the Virus Concocts Its Amazing Survival Jacket   

    Bentley FaneFane arrived at The University of Arizona (UA) with a collection or viruses assembled at the University of Arkansas and the University of California, San Diego. Now a professor in the UA Department of Plant Sciences and a BIO5 member, he began new experiments on the complex, four-billion-year-old life story of the virus.

  • David Galbraith: Reshaping Bioscience, One Genome at a Time  

    For years, biomedical science has been turning individual genes on and off as way to treat gene-based maladies, and as a research tool. Now, a new challenge involves finding ways to bring the entire genetic blueprint of humans, animals and plants into play.

    For that, a University of Arizona (UA) research team is seeking crucial innovations that may lead to advances in diagnosing and treating diseases, the war on cancer, increased productivity in agriculture to feed the ever-increasing world population, and more efficient production of biofuels.

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