Alejandro Sánchez-Alvarado’s dynamic enthusiasm comes through as he talks about his passion: regeneration. In an interview for Biome he reflects on his personal experiences in science that have shaped his current research. Planarian flatworms have remarkable regenerative capacity, being able to regenerate a whole organism from a tiny fragment of its body (for a general… Read more »
Climate change is predicted to cause sweeping effects on the world’s biomes, but one of the most peculiar will be on certain reptilian species who employ a physiological mechanism called Temperature-dependent sex determination (TSD). Research published last week in Climate Change Responses has highlighted an anomalous trend in the future sex-ratios of flatback turtles. Where… Read more »
Our new journal Climate Change Responses launches today, and to mark the occasion, we’ve asked co-Editor-in-Chief Frank Seebacher to tell us all about it.
It’s a year and a half since we last looked at what our Editorial Board thinks we still need to know about biology, and it’s Biology Week in the UK. Good enough reason for another look at the open questions our expert Board thinks are most pressing, interesting or neglected in biological science. Do we… Read more »
Written by Professor Lucia Altucci, Seconda Università degli Studi di Napoli European teams discovered unprecedented news on the epigenetic control on the immune system. Three recently published studies provide exciting biomedical-oriented advances on the epigenetic mechanisms regulating the immune function and, contextually, represent the step forward for the potential exploitation of the immune function to… Read more »
Food insecurity affects one billion people around the world, with millions suffering from chronic hunger and under-nourishment. Urban societies often enjoy ease of access to worldly foods and the luxury to feast on meals of their choice, but if attitudes do not change, and action is not taken, everyone could be eating a limited diet…. Read more »
Let me ask you all a question. What have fungi ever done for you? Well, from that slice of toast you had for breakfast to inspiring a medical breakthrough that has meant we can now survive once-fatal infectious diseases, the truth is fungi have done more for us than we give them credit for. In… Read more »
A global team of researchers, led by Jeffrey Scott at Cornell University, have successfully sequenced the house fly genome, published today in Genome Biology. In this guest post, Professor Scott tells us more about why the research represents a significant scientific advance. An optimist is a fellow who believes a housefly is looking for a… Read more »
In Greek mythology, the Argonauts are a band of heroes who accompany Jason on his quest to find the Golden Fleece, a garment whose origins likely lie in the use of sheep fleeces as sieves to collect gold flakes from running water. In a new paper published in BMC Biology, Anindya Dutta and colleagues mine… Read more »
According to Sun Tzu, the ancient Chinese military general, strategist and author of Art of War, the key to winning a battle, is knowing your enemy. And clearly, for those who are trying to eliminate some of the most devastating parasitic diseases known to humans and animals, understanding what makes parasites and their vectors tick [pun… Read more »