A man examining the soil and vegetation by a natural water source.

School of Life Sciences News

Life sciences involves studies of living organisms and their life processes, including their evolution and relationships with other living organisms and our planet. The courses and programs offered by the School of Life Sciences are designed for those students pursuing professional careers in medicine, science, and science education.

Current Life Sciences News

blurred figure in UNLV commencement robe
Campus News |

UNLV’s commencement tradition highlights exceptional students who embody the highest level of academic excellence and community involvement.

springtime bees
Campus News |

A flowery collection of top headlines featuring UNLV faculty and students.

Tseng lab
Research |

The Tseng Lab at UNLV discovers frog larvae can regrow their eyes, and seeks ways to replicate the process to benefit humans.

Campus landscape
Campus News |

Some of the hottest headlines featuring UNLV faculty, staff, and students.

two female students sitting at stone table out on campus
People |

 Students share their hopes for the semester ahead.

Taylor Garson in Wing lab using research equipment
Campus News |

New Ph.D. graduate Taylor Gerson credits faculty for putting her on the path toward graduate research.

Life Sciences In The News

Simply Recipes

You dry pots with it, wipe your hands on it, and use it to swab the counter, but when you’re done—if you’re like me—you probably hang your trusty kitchen towel right back on the oven or dishwasher door handle. And this cycle repeats for days, weeks, maybe even months with a single dish rag. And yet, we all know that the kitchen is the perfect breeding ground for all sorts of potentially harmful germs. The dish towel, unfortunately, is not immune to this.

Martha Stewart

Feeding pigeons birdseed in the park can be fun, but having these birds settle into your yard may be less appealing. For starters, their droppings contain uric acid, which can damage cars, roofs, and other surfaces over time. And because pigeons are non-migratory and tend to stay in one area year-round, they may repeatedly feed on garden seeds and seedlings. For bird lovers, the cooing and pretty color may be a boon. But if you prefer to keep these birds out of your garden and yard, we have expert-backed strategies to help.

Vision Monday

That level of regeneration may be out of the question for humans right now, but at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), one lab team is researching the possibility of animal eye regeneration, and how that might impact human eyecare.

Reno Gazette-Journal

Nearly every one of Big Basin's old-growth redwoods survived the wildfire. As University of Nevada, Las Vegas biologist Drew Peltier observed in 2023, just three years after the blaze, "coastal redwoods are supremely fire-adapted … and they seem to be recovering."

Las Vegas Weekly

A 2018 study from UNLV and the local nonprofit Tortoise Group estimated that more than 150,000 desert tortoises are being kept as pets throughout the Valley. Backyard breeding is a major driver of this overpopulation problem, and there simply aren’t enough people to house all of them. Ill-suited for the wild, roughly 1,000 of these captive creatures are displaced or put up for adoption annually.

Daily Express

Gardening and bird watching often go hand-in-hand with the feathered visitors bringing joy to many a British home, but experts say there are six things to avoid if you want to attract more avians.

Life Sciences Experts

An expert in insect physiology and evolution.
An expert in biological regeneration.
An expert in bioinformatics, virology, AIDS/HIV, Alzheimer's disease, and genetics.
An expert in ecology, fire management, and U.S. National Parks.
An expert on mammals.
An expert on hibernation, pupfish, evolution, and cellular biology.

Recent Life Sciences Accomplishments

Monika Karney, alumna Taylor Gerson, and Helen Wing (Life Sciences) published a paper in Nucleic Acids Research (Oxford University Press). Gerson completed her Ph.D. in December and is a post-doc at Scripps Research, San Diego, Calif. Karney is a self-funded MS student who works as a lab manager on Wing's team. 
Published in Nature Communications, a new study from Prasun Guha’s (Life Sciences) laboratory, led by Sujan Chatterjee (Nevada Institute of Personalized Medicine) et al., discovered that the small molecule IP6 (phytic acid) acts within the nucleus and is essential and sufficient for activating the HDAC3 epigenetic axis. The study further…
The Brain Injury Translational Research (BITR) lab proudly presented posters at the UMC 8th Annual Poster Symposium help Nov. 5-6, 2025.  Hana Sourjah, Dihini Perera, Ph.D. student Joe Cadiz, and Hyunhwa "Henna" Lee (all Nursing) received the 2nd Place Award in the Healthcare Student category for their…
Helen J. Wing (Life Sciences) has been invited to give a seminar in the Department of Bacteriology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, on Nov. 6. She has also been named the 2025 Marsha Betley Named Lecturer.
Drew Peltier (Life Sciences) co-authored a new journal article in New Phytologist quantifying drought mortality effects in global tree ring datasets. The paper is titled "Flashy, decoupled, or declining? Single theories fail to explain the diversity of drought mortality signals in tree rings."
Boo Shan Tseng (Life Sciences), Ranjani Murali (Life Sciences), and Christy Strong (Life Sciences), in collaboration with researchers at South Dakota State University and South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, were awarded a $4 million grant from the National Science Foundation.  Through collaboration of biologists, mathematicians,…