Jeff Elhai Center for the Study of Biological Complexity and Dept. of Biology Virginia Commonwealth University  Research  Former lab members Selected 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.