Laurel Yohe
Bat Wrangler
Some people find bats spooky. Not Laurel Yohe. The researcher doesn’t mind entering a forest at night to seek out bats to study, even though it means encountering “all sorts of creepy, crawly things.”
“Once I started working with bats, I fell completely in love with them,” said Yohe, an assistant professor in the Department of Bioinformatics and Genomics. “They’re really interesting models to try to understand major issues in human health.”
“I like to study animals with weird adaptations, living at the extremes.”
Through a dual appointment at the North Carolina Research Campus, a public-private research center in nearby Kannapolis that investigates the connection between diet and health, Yohe is exploring the nuances of bats’ diets and the possible implications to human health.
“I like to study animals with weird adaptations, living at the extremes,” she said. Bats — flying mammals that have extreme metabolisms and unusual diets — fit the bill.
While an undergraduate at Loyola University, Yohe realized she loved the culture of the research lab. Abandoning her original plan to become a neurosurgeon, she headed to Vietnam on a Fulbright fellowship after graduating to conduct bird conservation research.
At Stony Brook University, while earning a Ph.D. in ecology and evolution, she began to study the molecular evolution of the sense of smell in bats, which was followed by postdoctoral research at Yale University. Yohe’s dissertation made her an expert on bat noses — a topic that became especially relevant with the emergence of the coronavirus pandemic. Bats were considered the probable source of the coronavirus and loss of smell was a common symptom.
“Suddenly, this realm of research that pretty much nobody cared about was really under hyper focus,” Yohe said. “Where I came in was more about what makes the bats special – and how their noses allow them to transmit coronavirus but not get sick themselves.”
In addition to her work to understand the connection between bats’ nasal structures and how viruses enter the body, Yohe is collaborating with Charlotte colleagues on the role of diet in preventing or facilitating infections. She is eager to learn more about how some bats survive on diets of “crazy things” like sugar water. Learning how bats evolved to cope with such extreme diets could have implications for treating diabetes in people.
“People shouldn’t be scared of bats,” said Yohe, who recently received an NIH Loan Repayment Program award, designed to recruit and retain highly qualified professionals in biomedical or biobehavioral research careers and help them curb their student debt. “We should revere them for their incredible adaptations and the things we can learn from them.”
Some people find bats spooky. Not Laurel Yohe. The researcher doesn’t mind entering a forest at night to seek out bats to study, even though it means encountering “all sorts of creepy, crawly things.”
“Once I started working with bats, I fell completely in love with them,” said Yohe, an assistant professor in the Department of Bioinformatics and Genomics. “They’re really interesting models to try to understand major issues in human health.”
“I like to study animals with weird adaptations, living at the extremes.”
Through a dual appointment at the North Carolina Research Campus, a public-private research center in nearby Kannapolis that investigates the connection between diet and health, Yohe is exploring the nuances of bats’ diets and the possible implications to human health.
“I like to study animals with weird adaptations, living at the extremes,” she said. Bats — flying mammals that have extreme metabolisms and unusual diets — fit the bill.
While an undergraduate at Loyola University, Yohe realized she loved the culture of the research lab. Abandoning her original plan to become a neurosurgeon, she headed to Vietnam on a Fulbright fellowship after graduating to conduct bird conservation research.
At Stony Brook University, while earning a Ph.D. in ecology and evolution, she began to study the molecular evolution of the sense of smell in bats, which was followed by postdoctoral research at Yale University. Yohe’s dissertation made her an expert on bat noses — a topic that became especially relevant with the emergence of the coronavirus pandemic. Bats were considered the probable source of the coronavirus and loss of smell was a common symptom.
“Suddenly, this realm of research that pretty much nobody cared about was really under hyper focus,” Yohe said. “Where I came in was more about what makes the bats special – and how their noses allow them to transmit coronavirus but not get sick themselves.”
In addition to her work to understand the connection between bats’ nasal structures and how viruses enter the body, Yohe is collaborating with Charlotte colleagues on the role of diet in preventing or facilitating infections. She is eager to learn more about how some bats survive on diets of “crazy things” like sugar water. Learning how bats evolved to cope with such extreme diets could have implications for treating diabetes in people.
“People shouldn’t be scared of bats,” said Yohe, who recently received an NIH Loan Repayment Program award, designed to recruit and retain highly qualified professionals in biomedical or biobehavioral research careers and help them curb their student debt. “We should revere them for their incredible adaptations and the things we can learn from them.”