ISB News

Path-seq illustration

Profiling Pathogen Gene Expression from Infected Host Cells

Researchers at ISB reported a novel method, Path-seq, to profile expression of all MTB genes within infected mice. This study presents the most comprehensive transcriptome profiling of MTB from in vivo infection and a major technical advancement for studying any host-pathogen interaction.

Biology students

Biology Classes ‘Come Alive’ After Teacher’s Summer with ISB

Kyle Kinzler, a high school biology teacher from Portland, Oregon, spent part of last summer at Institute for Systems Biology to evolve his curriculum and learn new ways to teach relevant, compelling and innovative content to his students. As a result, he says his classes has “come alive.”

Amy Zamora

Spotlight on Amy Zamora, ISB Systems Research Scholar

Amy Zamora joined ISB in August as a Systems Research Scholar. The Systems Research Scholars Program provides recent college undergraduates a springboard to become the next generation’s pioneers of interdisciplinary scientific research. In this Q&A, Zamora describes her experiences at ISB, research interests, future aspirations, and much more.

ISB develops stress test to predict how diatoms will react to ocean acidification

In a study published in Nature Communications and with implications for understanding effects of climate change, ISB researchers show microscopic phytoplankton are more resilient in an acidified environment.

ISB’s Dr. Eliza Peterson Earns TB Junior Investigator Award

Dr. Eliza Peterson, a senior research scientist who studies tuberculosis (TB) in the Institute for Systems Biology’s Baliga Lab, has been recognized by the University of Washington’s Tuberculosis Research and Training Center with a TB Junior Investigator Award.

Adaptive Prediction of Yeast

New Study on How Microbes Learn to Predict the Future

In a study published in Genome Biology and Evolution, researchers at Institute for Systems Biology (ISB) designed an experiment to evolve novel adaptive prediction capability in yeast by repetitively exposing it to caffeine, followed by a toxin. Remarkably, the yeast cells learned the structure of this novel environmental pattern within as few as 50 generations to use caffeine as a cue for anticipating and mitigating lethal effects of the toxin.

Spotlight: Ayodale Braimah, Undergraduate Intern

Congratulations to Ayodale Braimah, an undergraduate intern in the Baliga Lab, who has just been accepted into the medical school at the University of Kansas. Ayodale has been studying microbiology at the University of Washington and sought a position in the Baliga Lab in order to immerse himself in an authentic research experience in microbiology and molecular biology. He specifically wanted to better understand how organisms adapt to new environments….

Spotlight: Claudia Ludwig

Congratulations to Claudia Ludwig, Director, Systems Education Experiences (SEE), on being named the winner of the 2017 AWIS Award for Excellence in Science Outreach from the Seattle Chapter of Association for Women in Science (AWIS). Claudia, a former high school biology and chemistry teacher, is the Director of Systems Education Experiences at ISB, a program that she has been instrumental in building since she joined ISB in 2004. Because of…

ISB Scientists Have Discovered When and Why a Microbial Community Might Collapse

Researchers in the Baliga Lab at Institute for Systems Biology have developed a framework for assessing the “health” of a microbial community through a stress test that enables them to ask when and why microbial communities collapse under different environmental conditions. The study, published on March 20, 2017, in the journal Molecular Systems Biology, determined that while microbes are equipped to respond to environmental changes, when pushed to the extreme…

Internship Careers

ISB High School Intern Gives TEDx Talk

Radhika Dalal, a student at Kamiak High School in Mukilteo, presented a talk at TEDxSnoIsleLibraries on Nov. 18. She also participated in a summer internship at ISB to learn how to become a student ambassador for Project Feed 1010, a Baliga Lab research initiative that aims to make scientific breakthroughs for scaling up sustainable agriculture as well as developing and implementing associated STEM curriculum in high schools across the United…

Project Feed 1010 High School Interns Launch Video

High school students Linnea Stavney and Ivan Esmeral produced this awesome documentary about their summer internship in our Baliga Lab, where they helped to oversee work related to Project Feed 1010.

‘Invisible Forest’ Curriculum

By Claudia Ludwig Baliga Lab Education Program Manager The past nine days have been exciting for the Baliga Lab. Dr. Anne Thompson and I have been working with eight teachers to begin the process of translating Anne’s oceanography research on the Invisible Forest into curriculum that offers a hands-on, engaging experience for high school students. The group developed the framework and drafted lessons that will be field tested this year….

New Baliga Lab Publication in Cell Systems

The Baliga Lab’s Dr. Christopher Plaisier was the lead author of the study “Causal Mechanistic Regulatory Network for Glioblastoma Deciphered Using Systems Genetics Network Analysis” which published online in Cell Systems on July 14. Dr. Plaisier wrote a summary of the research: 3 Bullets: Using data from TCGA and ENCODE, ISB researchers developed integrative database and analysis platforms that provide insight about the underpinnings of glioblastoma multiforme. Researchers developed a…

Project Feed 1010 Partners with Northeastern University to Advance Sustainable Agriculture

ISB’s Project Feed 1010 is building a global, crowd-sourced network of educators, students, researchers and farmers to optimize and scale-up sustainable agriculture practices and educate the future scientific workforce. To support this global network, we have partnered with Northeastern University to develop database, web and mobile infrastructures with functionalities for data tracking, monitoring, analytics and predictive modeling. For the next 10 weeks, more than 20 graduate-level computer science students will…

Learning From Microalgae as ‘Biofactories’

In a newly published research, members of the Baliga and Price labs share discoveries from their studies of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii – Chlamy for short. Excerpt: To the casual observer, algae may appear to be a nuisance. But for researchers, photosynthetic microalgae and other microbes have the potential to become sustainable biofactories that can economically produce renewable biofuels and a wide variety of other valuable commodities. One such group of microalgae…

ISB Q&A: Nina Arens and Pop-Up Science

Q: What is your role? A: I am a Research Associate for the Baliga Lab, where I perform genome-wide experiments that feed into the complex, predictive software tools that we create here. One project I work on investigates how microbial communities respond to stressful environmental changes over time. It is challenging research: my model organism—Desulfovibrio vulgaris—is hard to grow at the bench. Desulfovibrio is anaerobic; it likes to grow in…

Sustainable Agriculture: Project Feed 1010 Launches

ISB is crowdfunding for the first time. We are raising money to support high school science teachers and their students to become citizen scientists for Project Feed 1010, our new study that aims to optimize aquaponics and that will impact ‪#‎STEM‬ education. Watch our video: https://www.crowdrise.com/ProjectFeed101024forScience ‪#‎24forScience‬

Genetic Switch May Help Marine Microalgae Respond to Higher CO2 Levels

3 Bullets Rapid climate change, including ocean acidification caused by increasing carbon dioxide (CO2) levels, is predicted to affect the oceans, sea life, and the global carbon cycle. Marine microalgae, including diatoms, are responsible for converting CO2 into oxygen and biologically usable carbon through photosynthesis. How these organisms will respond over the short and long term to rising CO2 is unknown. Growth experiments and transcriptomic analyses performed by UW and…