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Bongolo Falls along the Louetsí River (Lebamba, Gabon) creates a fast-flowing habitat where both short duration and long duration mormyrids reside, capturing food and singing electric courtship songs at night. How their sperm and eggs meet in such environments remains a mystery.

April 26, 2023

Shocking implications of electric fishes' tailless sperm

Tags:

adaptive evolution, electric fish, gene regulation, research

Michigan State University integrative biologist Jason Gallant and colleagues are using nearly $1 million from the National Science Foundation to understand the implications from a small African fish which evolved to have sperm with no tails but an electric-powered mating call. Greater insight into this interesting trait could ultimately shed light on human disease and shake up biology lessons on traditional gender roles.

Eran Andrechek is pictured in his laboratory. He hopes that his research will establish a role for the E2F5 gene in mammary gland development.

September 2, 2022

MSU researcher awarded $2.5 million NIH grant to study mammary gland development

Tags:

cancer research, developmental biology, gene regulation, mammary gland

When thinking about why breast cancer develops, it is critical to understand how normal development works. Recently, the National Institutes of Health awarded MSU physiology professor Eran Andrechek a five-year, $2.5 million grant to fund his research project of defining the role of the repressor E2F5 gene in mammary gland development. in addition to a providing better understanding of the developmental biology, Andrechek hopes the findings will lead to further research on breast cancer.