Twenty-five years ago today, on the 12th February 1988, a landmark article was published in Science describing a phylogenetic tree of the metazoans, derived from molecular data. The article, by Katherine Field and colleagues (widely referred to as ‘Field et al.’), represented the first use of small subunit ribosomal RNA to establish the metazoan phylogeny…. Read more »
Songs of seduction deconstructed For most of us, birdsong is charming, or perhaps an annoying wake-up call; for neuroscientists, it is also an important model system for complex learned behaviours. The behaviours are reasonably accessible to study, but true understanding will require a knowledge of the underlying biomechanics, and this in turn requires a very… Read more »
A tribute by Shibo Jiang (Shanghai Medical College, Fudan University, Shanghai, China shibojiang@fudan.edu.cn) On the morning of January 29, 2013 when I turned on my computer, I saw the first email saying “It is with great sadness that we have heard Kuan-Teh Jeang passed away suddenly on Sunday night”. My first reaction is “Oh my… Read more »
The first articles in this series have now been published at: https://www.plantmethods.com/series/NGS During 2013, Plant Methods welcomes submissions to a special thematic series on Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) technologies. The idea for the series arose out of the recent joint GARNet–Genetics Society meeting on “New Technologies to Advance Plant Research” held in November 2012 at… Read more »
The musical chirping of crickets will be a familiar sound to readers, but many other insects have their own songs too. In the laboratory stalwart Drosophila fruit fly, males “sing” to females during courtship by vibrating their wings to produce different sinusoidal patterns that may not seem very melodic to you or me, but –… Read more »
So that scientific research on animals can be communicated confidently, it is important to ensure that the naming of species is stable and universal. For animal species, the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN) acts as an advisory body for the zoological community by ensuring the correct use of animal species names. As such, they… Read more »
It is with great sadness that we announce that Kuan-Teh Jeang M.D. Ph.D., Associate Editor for Cell & Bioscience, passed away suddenly in the night of 27th January 2013. Dr Jeang was a prominent figure in research on the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and the human tumor virus HTLV, and published prolifically on the disease-causing… Read more »
As a result of human industrial activities, atmospheric carbon is increasing. This increase has significantly contributed to the climate change that we are experiencing in the world today, and the increasingly worrying predicted changes in climate in the near future. Much scientific research and effort is therefore currently being put into mitigating for these changes… Read more »