Life Sciences and Chemistry

The Goualougo Triangle, nestled between two rivers in a Central African rain forest, is so remote that primate researchers who traveled 34 miles, mostly by foot, from the nearest village through dense forests and swampland to get there, have discovered a rare find: chimpanzees that have had very little or no contact at all with humans.

The chimpanzees’ behavior when first coming in contact with the researchers was a telltale sign of lack of human exposure — the chimpanzees didn’t run and

Discovery highlights molecular screening work at Institute of Chemistry and Cell Biology
Boston, Mass. — Scientists studying how cells know when and where to divide now have a new tool to study the final fast stage of cell division. The first experiments using this new tool reveal some of the molecular conversation that helps a cell tightly choreograph the time and place of pinching into two cells. In the March 14 Science, researchers from Harvard Medical School (HMS) and colleagues report

Study featured on cover of the journal Nature

Hormones and neurotransmitters secreted from cells via bubble-like vesicles are released using age-related criteria, with the youngest vesicles getting first shot at releasing their contents, according to research led by a University of Southern California (USC) physiologist. This is a “complete reverse” from what had previously been presumed to be the process behind hormone secretion, notes Robert Chow, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of

St. Jude scientists say FKHR protein causes primitive cells called myoblasts to fuse, while deficiency of FKHR contributes to muscle cancer

Investigators at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital have discovered that a protein causing mature cells to commit suicide also helps primitive muscle cells called myoblasts fuse together, allowing them to develop into muscles. The finding of this unexpected new role for the protein, called FKHR, suggests that future research might offer cl

Animal behaviorists have something new to crow about.

Researchers at the University of Washington have found a species of crow that distinctly alters its behavior when attempting to steal food from another crow, depending on whether or not the other bird is a relative.

The Northwestern crow (Corvus caurinus) uses a passive strategy when it attempts to take food from kin but becomes aggressive when it tries to steal a morsel from a non-related crow. This is believed to be the

Tube worms living at deep-sea oil seeps in the Gulf of Mexico significantly alter their habitat, similar to beavers altering the flow of a river. Researchers from Pennsylvania State University have just published an important finding in the journal Ecology Letters.

A computer model of tube worm aggregations was created for Lamellibrachia luymesi, which is among the longest lived animals known. Both actual and model populations persist for centuries and take up high quantities of sulfide fro