Life Sciences and Chemistry

Researchers studying plant behaviour have discovered similarities between the processes preventing plants from wilting and humans from suffering impotence. Data recently published by the University of the West of England shows the same chemical chain of events is involved in both situations – and has led to an understanding of how water loss from plants might be reduced.

This blocking action has parallels with the chemical effect of impotence treatments in humans. Plants lose water through

Miniature floating craft can be programmed to move and assemble in complex ways.

Harvard chemists are playing with bath toys. Floating bubble-powered craft designed to attract and repel one another, are helping them model the machinations of groups such as foraging ants, nest-building termites or schools of fish 1 .

Group dynamics are not always obvious from individuals’ behaviour, but emerge from their interactions. Computer models can simulate such processe

Alternative yeast joins genome party.

First there was budding yeast ( Saccharomyces cerevisiae ). Partly responsible for scientists’ survival by fermenting their staples beer and bread, they polished off its DNA sequence back in 1997.

Now the minority fungus of lab culture – fission yeast ( Schizosaccharomyces pombe ) – is fighting back. This week S. pombe enters the experimental big leagues, with the announcement of its completed genome 1

Nearly fifty years ago, researchers discovered that when cells in laboratory cultures are infected by a virus, they secrete a substance that protects other cells from infection. In 1957 Alick Issaks and Jean-Jacques Lindenmann traced this effect to a protein called interferon, a molecule now known to play a key role in the immune system. Human and animal cells produce it in a rapid “first wave” response to infections. Since its discovery, scientists have sought to use this natural substance to cure a

Sophisticated jewellery appeared with social events.

Our early ancestors glammed-up for a get-together. Humans worldwide began wearing jewellery at the same time as groups started meeting up, say US researchers. The finding counters the idea that ’modern’ behaviour swept the globe when modern humans migrated out of Africa.

Mary Stiner and her colleagues unearthed ancient necklaces at three sites in Asia, Africa and Europe. Residents of Kenya around 40,000 years ago

Snails can teach us a great deal about how we form memories, according to a group of neuroscientists at the University of Sussex.

Research by Dr Ildikó Kemenes, Professor Paul Benjamin, Professor Michael O’Shea and colleagues shows that nitric oxide plays a vital role in the formation of long-term memory in snails. This is of crucial importance because the gas has already been shown to play such a role in humans and other mammals.

Ideally, scientists would like to use mammals to st