Arabidopsis seed stained with pectin antibody (green) and cell wall counterstain (red).

Studying song preferences in female zebra finches at the Woolley Lab. Photo by Pat Rhodes.

Studying the distribution of biodiversity across landscapes at the Pollock Lab.

The Hargreaves Lab monitoring plants transplanted above their normal elevation enclosed in a mini-greenhouse.

Florida carpenter ant from the Abouheif Lab showing variation in the shape and size of workers in a single colony.

The Hekimi lab uses cutting edge molecular genetics to understand organismal aging and... fix it.

The Chapman lab studies effects of environmental stressors on fishes, including swamp-dwelling African cichlids

The Fussmann Lab investigating the response of lake plankton to changes in the timing of annual ice cover.

The Bell Lab is currently extending laboratory investigations of experimental evolution to field scales at the Gault Nature Reserve.

Using cutting-edge live-cell imaging approaches, the Hayer lab investigates how cells coordinate with each other during collective cell migration.

The Gregory-Eaves Lab applies spatio-temporal approaches to investigate how lakes and their communities have varied over hundreds of years

Developing oocyte in Drosophila (Lasko lab)

Muscles with highly regular sarcomere structure investigated by the Schöck lab

The Soper Lab investigating the flexibility of nutritional strategies in tropical trees in Costa Rica

The Watt lab investigates cerebellar structure and function in health and models of disease.

The Weber Lab tracking phase separation in vitro, in live bacteria and in developing worms

A kinesin (green) leads to the formation of the ER (red) during polar cell growth revealed in the Zheng lab

The Sakata lab studies how songbirds like zebra finches learn their songs (photo: Raina Fan)

The Reyes Lab tracking single copies of DNA polymerases in live budding yeast to understand DNA replication.

Barbados bullfinch innovation - stealing sugar packets (Lefebvre lab)

Graduate students from Cristescu Lab collecting environmental DNA at the Gault Nature Reserve, Mount Saint Hilaire.

Abiotic stress screening using the McGill Plant Phenomics Platform (MP3) in the Bureau lab

Germ cell nuclei from the Zetka lab undergoing the events of meiosis in C. elegans

The Gerhold lab uses C. elegans germline stem cells to study the complexities of cell division in vivo.

The Guigueno Lab studies how ecology and environmental contaminants influence behaviour, cognition, and the brain, with a focus on spatial behaviour and neurogenesis.

The Gonzalez Lab built the Large Experiment Array of Ponds (LEAP) to do experimental evolution with aquatic ecosystems in the field.

The Moon lab uses Drosophila as a disease model (Left: the fat body; Right: polytene chromosomes from the salivary glands)

The Hendry Lab studies eco-evolutionary dynamics in natural populations. We work in many systems, including Darwin’s finches, Trinidadian guppies, and stickleback

The Guichard lab studies meta-ecosystems by combining mathematical models and field experiments

The Roy lab uses the model organism C. elegans to investigate how cells and organisms adapt to multiple developmental and environmental challenges

The Iversen lab studies how adaptations to life in freshwater structure species distributions.

Welcome to the Department of Biology

Welcome to Biology!


Biology is the study of life, aimed at addressing fundamental questions about the origin, evolution, development, and behaviour of living organisms, from the structure and function of their molecules and cells to the interactions and evolutionary dynamics between organisms and their ecosystems. In the Department of Biology at McGill University, our faculty research the remarkable and often surprising ways in (or by) which life emerges, changes, grows, and dies across a diversity of microbes, plants, and animals, including humans. We offer courses in each of these areas, highlighting the breadth and depth of expertise of our faculty. Understanding Biology helps us to understand the past, present, and future of the natural world that surrounds us, and better appreciate our own place within it.

 

  

 

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A Glimpse into Biology 

In collaboration with the McGill Biology Department, the McGill Biology Student Union (MBSU) presents perspectives and retrospectives of McGill's Biology students.


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