Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences

Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences The Huck Institutes bring collaborative discovery to life at Penn State University.

According to Priya Kumar, PNC Technologies Career Development Professor, youth-led learning lets kids take the lead in d...
09/10/2026

According to Priya Kumar, PNC Technologies Career Development Professor, youth-led learning lets kids take the lead in designing learning experiences and delivering them to peers. Students discover something they’re excited about — like computing — create a curriculum, and teach the material to other youth their age.

Khushi Khurana, a high school student who creates and leads coding camps in the Philadelphia area, collaborated with Priya Kumar, PNC Technologies Career Development Professor in the College of Information Sciences and Technology, to explore a youth-led STEM learning model that puts children’s voi...

Cadmium is a naturally occurring, toxic heavy metal found in many soils across Latin America and the Caribbean, where ca...
09/09/2026

Cadmium is a naturally occurring, toxic heavy metal found in many soils across Latin America and the Caribbean, where cacao trees are widely cultivated. It makes its way into cocoa seeds, called beans, that are roasted and made into chocolate, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations—but some cacao varieties take up less of the toxic element than others. An international team of researchers, including Penn State scientists, found genetic differences in how two varieties managed cadmium uptake and facilitated the metal’s movement throughout the plant.

Varieties of cacao plants — which give rise to chocolate — differently mitigate and manage a toxic heavy metal that occurs naturally in the plants' soil. Researchers have now identified genetic differences in how two varieties manage metal uptake and facilitate the metal’s movement throughout ...

What really set early humans apart from their ape relatives? According to Penn State researchers, it might have been the...
09/08/2026

What really set early humans apart from their ape relatives? According to Penn State researchers, it might have been the way they walked: heel-strike steps were more stressful for bones and joints, but they allowed for farther, more efficient movement.

Consistent heel-to-toe steps are more unique to humans than previously thought and allowed early humans to walk farther more efficiently, but at the cost of higher impact forces on bones and joints, according to a new study led by a Penn State anthropologist.

Last week, the Huck Institutes marked the 30th anniversary of its founding, honoring fundamental contributions and looki...
09/04/2026

Last week, the Huck Institutes marked the 30th anniversary of its founding, honoring fundamental contributions and looking forward to continued excellence in interdisciplinary life sciences research.

Full story: https://www.psu.edu/news/huck-institutes-life-sciences/story/huck-institutes-mark-30-years-interdisciplinary-life-sciences

Flickr album: https://www.flickr.com/photos/huckinstitutes/albums/72177720335466899/

The Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences celebrated 30 years since its 1996 founding as the Life Sciences Consortium with a reception at the Bryce Jordan Center’s 1855 Club.

As proteins are made in a cell, they are folded into the 3D structure that allows them to work, but sometimes this proce...
09/03/2026

As proteins are made in a cell, they are folded into the 3D structure that allows them to work, but sometimes this process can go wrong. When it does, the misfolded proteins lose some or all of their function and usually get tagged by the cell’s quality assurance and maintenance crews, which try to repair the proteins or, if they can’t, strip them to recycle their parts. A new study led by scientists at Penn State revealed that proteins containing a certain type of structure are more likely to misfold and be targeted for removal, yet nearly half still manage to evade the cellular maintenance crew. The misfolded proteins that persist could accumulate in cells, disrupting the balance of protein production and recycling and potentially contributing to aging and disease, according to the researchers.

https://bit.ly/4gxJsgq

A new study led by Penn State scientists revealed that proteins containing a certain type of structure are more likely to misfold, yet nearly half still manage to evade the cellular maintenance crew that would typically remove the malfunctioning protein. The misfolded proteins that persist could acc...

Farmers in West Africa have long used a mixture of traditional plants to reduce fungi in grain storage, but the true imp...
09/02/2026

Farmers in West Africa have long used a mixture of traditional plants to reduce fungi in grain storage, but the true impact of this approach was unknown, according to an international team led by Penn State food scientists. Now, that team has found that a formulation made from an evergreen tree called neem, lemongrass, garlic and hot chili plants effectively inhibits the growth of two kinds of Fursarium fungus in corn.

Farmers in West Africa have long used a mixture of traditional plants to reduce fungi in grain storage, but the true impact of this approach was unknown, according to an international team led by Penn State food scientists. Now, that team has found that a formulation made from an evergreen tree call...

Sepsis, a life-threatening condition that stems from the body trying to fight off an infection, plagues over 1.5 million...
09/01/2026

Sepsis, a life-threatening condition that stems from the body trying to fight off an infection, plagues over 1.5 million patients a year in the U.S. alone, with one in three deaths recorded in the hospital attributed in part to sepsis. Despite the severity of the condition, which can kill in as little as 12 hours, it takes between two and seven days for most traditional approaches to definitively identify sepsis-causing bacteria in blood infections.

A team led by an engineer at Penn State has developed a way to condense the days-long diagnosis timeline to just hours. The new approach rapidly grows the bacteria present in collected blood samples, intermittently analyzing the samples with advanced techniques that help scientists identify the specific pathogens causing infection

A team led by an engineer at Penn State has developed a way to identify the bacteria responsible for a bloodstream infection — a main cause of sepsis. Using their new technique, the researchers condensed a days-long diagnosis timeline to just hours, potentially offering an approach that could help...

What if, instead of spraying fields with undiscriminating pesticides, farmers could protect their crops by attracting th...
08/31/2026

What if, instead of spraying fields with undiscriminating pesticides, farmers could protect their crops by attracting the predators of the specific pests they're facing?

Different cover crops may affect how plants can defend themselves against pests — including attracting more insects that eat harmful caterpillars, according to a new study led by a Penn State research team that includes corresponding author Jared Ali, associate chair of the Intercollege Graduate Degree Program in Ecology and director of the Huck's Center for Chemical Ecology.

Different cover crops may affect how plants can defend themselves against pests — including attracting more insects that eat harmful caterpillars, according to a new study led by researchers at Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences.

Neela Yennawar, research professor with the Huck Institutes and director of the X-Ray Crystallography and Scattering and...
08/28/2026

Neela Yennawar, research professor with the Huck Institutes and director of the X-Ray Crystallography and Scattering and Biomolecular Interactions Core Facilities, has been named the Huck's director of instrumentation grant initiatives.

Neela Yennawar, research professor with Penn State’s Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences and director of the X-Ray Crystallography and Scattering and Biomolecular Interactions Core Facilities, has been named the institutes' new director of instrumentation grant initiatives.

Physical activity in adulthood may depend on exercise conducted while growing, according to a new study led by Penn Stat...
08/27/2026

Physical activity in adulthood may depend on exercise conducted while growing, according to a new study led by Penn State researchers. The study, conducted in birds, is the first to demonstrate directly that experiences during development influence how efficiently adults use energy during movement.

Moving efficiently may influence how animals evolve, explained Jonas Rubenson, professor of kinesiology at Penn State. The hypothesis is that animals who use less energy for movement have more energy available for mating, foraging, hunting or other activities needed for survival.

Extra physical work by birds as they grew resulted in less effortful movement as an adult, which may provide evidence that activity in childhood affects adult capacity in animals in general — including humans, according to a new study by Penn State researchers.

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