Elaine Fuchs used to do crossword puzzles as a diversion from her undergraduate studies. With crosswords, every solved clue creates new hints to help solve neighboring clues. Fuchs, an HHMI investigator at The Rockefeller University, has followed a similar approach throughout her professional life. By honing each experimental finding into a new set of tools, she has probed deeper into the question that first piqued her curiosity three decades ago. read story
Unlike your computer’s memory chips, whose circuits are etched into a solid slab of silicon, real brain circuits change shape as they learn. HHMI investigator Michael D. Ehlers and his colleagues at Duke University are themselves learning how neurons remold their connections, and they may have identified the brain’s favored sculpting tool.
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When it comes to replenishing lost body parts, some of our distant cousins can teach humans a thing or two. Zebrafish, for example, have no problem regenerating perfect tailfins after being nipped by an aquarium mate—or snipped by an inquisitive doctoral student, like the University of Washington’s Cristi Stoick-Cooper. read story
Embryonic stem (ES) cells are plain enough to look at, forming a nondescript clump within the hollow ball of an early embryo. But that generic character is key to their magical rejuvenating potential. Unlike all other cells, which are preordained toward a specialized form and function, ES cells have a clean slate. The developing embryo can mold them into any cell type it needs. read story
Sugar and spice and X chromosome twice—that’s what girls are made of, despite the fact that this double dollop of X chromosomes can be deadly for females of any species.
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Last year, the two inventors—both unemployed at the time—developed an elegant procedure out of an idea they had begun exploring together in the 1990s. Instead of having a muddle of fluorescently labeled proteins glowing at once, sloshing light waves everywhere, they found a way to turn on just a few molecules at a time. read story
Telomeres, the long chains of DNA letters capping the ends of chromosomes, seem like a Dr. Seuss creation. What they spell out, in the language of DNA, amounts to gibberish.
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Evolution may not always plod along at the, well, evolutionary pace we all learned about in school.
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You can learn a lot about a cell by the company it keeps. Horacio Frydman hopes to learn volumes about mysterious cells in the ovaries of fruit flies that harbor an unexpected guest, an intracellular bacterium called Wolbachia.
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Couch potatoes, take heart. That irrepressible urge to veg out might just be a matter of brain chemistry–at least, in hamsters. read story (pdf)