NEWS

Extavour

Digitize, Debunk, Discover: Extavour group overturns dogma of developmental biology

July 3, 2019

Eggs come in all sizes and shapes, depending on the species. Cassandra Extavour wants to understand why.

The professor of Organismic & Evolutionary biology and of Molecular & Cellular Biology at Harvard University has been fascinated by animal development since she was an undergraduate. In particular, Extavour has made major breakthroughs in the understanding of embryos and germ cells (eggs and sperm). But for many years, she was slightly isolated in her pursuit. Traditionally when biologists try to understand the evolution of egg cells, they have focused on a small...

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Executive Director of Research Queenan

BQ Meet QBio: NSF-Simons welcomes Bridget Queenan

January 1, 2019

“When I was little, I realized that I had the same birthday as Isaac Newton, which seemed like a tough act to follow,” says Bridget Queenan. “So I asked myself, what could you do with your life that Newton couldn’t? And the answer was: try to figure out how life works.”

As the inaugural Executive Director of Research at the NSF-Simons Center for Quantitative Biology at Harvard, Queenan has the chance to pursue that dream. ...

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Needle in a haystack

Finding a Neuron in a Haystack: Ramanathan lab develops new strategy for assessing causality in complex networks

December 20, 2018

How do cells give rise to behavior? This fundamental question has been remarkably difficult to answer over the last century. Why?

“Not all cells in the brain are created equal,” says Dr. B.N. Queenan, Executive Director of Research of Harvard’s Quantitative Biology Initiative. “Different neurons control different aspects of behavior.” Considering the large number of neurons in most organisms – from flies (250,000) to mice (71...

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Lord of the wings

How to Build a Dragonfly: Rycroft group reveals mathematical principles that build insect wings

September 17, 2018

Just by looking at spots and stripes, you could identify a tiger from a cheetah, or a giraffe from a zebra. For people who love insects, they can do the same. Different insects have distinct patterns on their wings. Without even seeing the body of the insect, it’s possible to pick out a dragonfly versus a mayfly or a fruitfly or a damselfly.

“In many insect species, wings are like human fingerprints,” says Christopher Rycroft,...

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NSF-Simons Center at Harvard

A New Brand of Biology: Harvard becomes home to the NSF-Simons Center

May 25, 2018

The National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Simons Foundation have awarded a grant to Harvard scientists to create a research center aimed at bringing biologists and mathematicians together to answer some of the central questions about living systems.

Dubbed the NSF-Simons Center for Mathematical and Statistical Analysis of Biology at Harvard University, the center will be one of the cornerstones of the recently announced Quantitative Biology Initiative which is aimed at integrating mathematical, statistical, and engineering approaches with biology.

Gazette...

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The Start of an Era: Harvard's Quantitative Biology Initiative Launches!

April 4, 2018

For centuries, people have looked at living things and wondered how they work, why they look the way they do, and how they adapt to changing environments.

Yet despite the enormous strides made in understanding such developments with the advent of such aids as single-cell sequencing, whole-brain imaging, and connectomics, there is still much that biologists do not understand about the systems they study.

To address that gap, Harvard is launching the Quantitative Biology Initiative, with support from University President Drew Faust and Edgerley Family Dean of the...

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