Victoria Bautch, chair of the biology department, has been awarded a $6 million Outstanding Investigator Award from the National Institutes of Health’s National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NIH-NHLBI).

The genome of a fruit fly is strikingly similar to that of a human — so much so that scientists have been studying these tiny insects for over 100 years, in search of treatments for diseases like spinal muscular atrophy and neurological disorders. UNC geneticist Bob Duronio is one of those scientists.