Life Sciences and Chemistry

MBL researchers provide strong evidence that an ancient microbe thrives and evolves without sex

Biologists at the Josephine Bay Paul Center for Comparative Molecular Biology and Evolution at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) have confirmed that a group of microscopic animals has evolved for tens of millions of years without sexual reproduction. Their results demonstrate a radical exception to the biological rule that abandonment of sexual reproduction is an evolutionary dead end.

Our cells are resourceful when it comes to copying DNA, even when the DNA is damaged

Billions of cells divide every day in our bodies to replace those that wear out. To be able to do so, their DNA must be copied. A new Weizmann Institute study shows that the molecules in charge of the task of copying DNA — called DNA polymerases — are able to improvise in order to achieve this crucially important goal. This new insight into DNA replication and repair could assist in the diagnosis an

Weizmann Institute scientists reveal key part of nerve regeneration mechanism

A new study conducted by Weizmann Institute scientists has now uncovered a key process leading to the regeneration of peripheral nerves. Nerves in the peripheral nervous system (any part of the body aside from the brain and spinal cord) are capable of regenerating, though often they do so poorly or slowly. Scientists have been trying to understand how they regenerate in order to better treat damage to the pe

Conventional wisdom says that people deficient in one sense–such as vision or hearing–often acquire heightened acuity in another. These adjustments, of course, take place over the lifetime of an individual. Now it appears, however, that similar adjustments may occur over evolutionary time. Yoav Gilad and his colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthology in Germany and the Weizmann Institute in Israel have found a correlation between the loss of olfactory receptor (OR) genes, whi

How does the nervous system code, transmit, and process the information that steers our behaviour? Ronald S. Johansson’s research team at Umeå University in Sweden is now publishing its discovery of a new principle for this.

The prevailing view is that information is coded and transmitted by variations in the number of nerve impulses per time unit in the fibres of the nerve cells, that is, as a frequency code.

Johansson’s research team at the Section for Physiology present in the jo

By exposing rats to novel objects and measuring their brain signals, Duke University researchers have detected telltale signal reverberations in wide areas of the brain during sleep that reveal the process of consolidating memories. According to the researchers, their findings offer important evidence that extensive regions of the brain are involved in processing memories during a particular form of sleep, called slow-wave sleep.

The researchers said their findings lay to rest previous doub