Jeff Elhai Center for the Study of Biological Complexity and Dept. of Biology Virginia Commonwealth University  Research  Lab members old and current Recent publications Life of the student scientist

Ongoing Projects

• Mechanism of heterocyst spacing in cyanobacteria
  Towards a complete molecular and genetic understanding of what is arguably nature's simplest
  example of multicellular pattern formation
   
• Signals governing the establishment and maintenance of symbiosis between plants and cyanobacteria
  Many plants have domesticated N2-fixing cyanobacteria. If we can find out how they do it,
  we might be able to teach important crop plants to do the same.
   
• Repeated sequences in bacterial genomes
  The origin and function of most noncoding sequences remain a mystery, even though it accounts for > 98% of human DNA. Much noncoding sequence consists of repeated sequences. We're figuring out why.
   
• Biological Information Knowledge Environment (BioBIKE)
  The overwhelming amount of biological information newly given to us demands that biologists retool to make use of it. We are developing a resource that enables biologists without prior computational experience to create new forms of computational analysis to confront new biological questions.