News: Research

Read the latest news from the College of Natural Sciences at The University of Texas at Austin

UT News

Mixing Ages in Head Start Stunts Academic Progress

Four-year-olds in the nation’s largest preschool program fare worse with 3-year-olds in their classrooms, according to new research led by Elizabeth Gershoff that shows a...

Different Ages, Different Learning: An infographic explains that separating children who are 3 from those who are 4 in Head Start may improve academic progress. Children play with blocks and the infographic summarizes differences in vocabulary, socialization, color recognition, etc. summarized in the article.

UT News

Chemistry in Mold Reveals Important Clue for Pharmaceuticals

In a discovery from the lab of Jessie Zhang that holds promise for future drug development, scientists have detected for the first time how nature...

Overall structure of FtmOx1, a mold enzyme that helps produce a toxin by adding a pair of oxygen atoms.

Research

Engineering Bacterial Communities Improves Plant Growth

University of Texas at Austin scientists say there's a simple way for home gardeners and small farmers to give plants a pesticide-free boost: by harnessing...

A row of 8 plants growing and flourishing at levels to varying degrees appear in front of a wall in an academic setting

Research

Study Shows Common Molecular Tool Kit Organisms Share Across Tree of Life

Researchers at UT Austin discovered the assembly instructions for nearly 1,000 protein complexes shared by most kinds of animals.

Researchers created the world’s largest protein map, identifying nearly 1,000 protein complexes that are shared across the tree of life. This image shows a small portion of that map.

Research

Froggy Went a Courtin'

A graduate student and her advisor in the Department of Integrative Biology at UT Austin have discovered that female frogs are also prone to the...

Two frogs sitting on moist ground

Research

Computer Scientists Find Mass Extinctions Can Accelerate Evolution

Robots evolve more quickly and efficiently after a virtual mass extinction modeled after real-life disasters such as the one that killed off the dinosaurs.

At the start of the simulation, a biped robot controlled by a computationally evolved brain stands upright on a 16 meter by 16 meter surface.

UT News

Corals Are Already Adapting to Global Warming, Scientists Say

Some coral populations already have genetic variants necessary to tolerate warm ocean waters, and humans can help to spread these genes, a team of scientists...

A view of a coral reef underwater

UT News

Genetic Road Map May Bring About Better Cotton Crops

A University of Texas at Austin scientist, working with an international research team, has developed the most precise sequence map yet of U.S. cotton and...

Dr. Z. Jeff Chen inspects a cotton plant in a campus greenhouse. Photo: Marsha Miller

UT News

HIV Not As Infectious Soon After Transmission As Thought

People who recently have been infected with HIV may not be as highly infectious as previously believed, a finding from the lab of Lauren Ancel...

Lauren Ancel Meyers at a podium in front of a projection of a global map with dots showing viral transmission