Research conducted by University of Texas at Austin professors Andrea Gore and David Crews has been included on Discover magazine’s list of the “Top 100 Science Stories of 2007.”
Gore is a professor of pharmacology and toxicology in the College of Pharmacy, and Crews is the Ashbel Smith Professor of Integrative Biology in the College of Natural Sciences.
Their research was number 22 of 100 and the only University of Texas science project to make the list.
Gore and Crews found that pesticides and other chemicals that disrupt hormones can affect not only rats that come into contact with them, but might also affect mating behavior in later generations.
The findings were published earlier this year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The researchers discovered that female rats avoid males whose great-grandmothers were exposed to a common fruit crop fungicide, preferring instead males whose ancestors were uncontaminated. Their research shows that environmental contamination could affect the evolution of wildlife through changes in mating behavior.
Read the original article describing their work here.
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