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Life Sciences
A swimsuit like shark skin? Not so fast
HarvardScience
By: Peter Reuell/
February 9, 2012
Researchers in a Harvard lab have developed a device, dubbed LADY GAGA, that allows them for the first time to precisely control airborne scents. They have used the device in their work unraveling how animals make navigational decisions based on their environment.
The search for life’s stirrings
As science wrestles with the problem of how life arose on Earth, hindsight shows that seemingly intractable obstacles can have simple, even elegant solutions, said Nobel laureate Jack Szostak.
Biophysicist Aravinthan Samuel has developed new techniques to monitor and influence the behavior of roundworms to learn how their basic nervous systems work, a first step to understanding the circuitry in more complex creatures, like humans.
Broad Institute awarded $32.5M grant
The Eli and Edythe L. Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT today announced that it has received a $32.5 million grant from the Boston-based Klarman Family Foundation to support a new collaborative effort focused on deciphering how human cells are wired.
Life Sciences Articles
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Harvard scientists have developed the fullest picture yet of how neurons in the brain interact to reinforce behaviors that range from learning to drug use, a finding that could open the door to new treatments for addiction.
Reaping benefits of exercise minus the sweat
A team led by researchers at Harvard-affiliated Dana-Farber Cancer Institute has isolated a natural hormone from muscle cells that triggers some of the key health benefits of exercise.
Harvard researchers have found that a tiny motor inside of us called dynein, one tasked with shuttling vital payloads throughout the cell’s intricate highway infrastructure, staggers, which is quite contrary to the regular, efficient poise of its fellow motors.
John Huth, the creator of the popular “Primitive Navigation” course, spent most of last summer investigating a mysterious phenomenon called “underwater lightning,” which some say can be used as a navigational tool.
A freshman seminar helps students to understand Darwin by reading his works and re-creating 10 experiments — including one showing that the wiggly creatures just don’t hear.
In a scientific first that could shed light on how signals travel in the brain and how learning alters neural pathways, scientists at Harvard have created genetically altered neurons that light up as they fire. The work may also lead to speedier drug development.
Rebuilding the brain’s circuitry
Harvard scientists have rebuilt genetically diseased circuitry in a section of the mouse hypothalamus, an area controlling obesity and energy balance, demonstrating that complex and intricately wired circuitry of the brain long considered incapable of cellular repair can be rewired with the right type of neuronal “replacement parts.”
Visiting Professor Pamela Diggle took listeners into the botanical roots of Thanksgiving dinner, illustrating how nature’s everyday trials forced plants to come up with unusual — and delicious — ways to survive.
The dramatic diversity of columbine flowers can be explained by a simple change in cell shape. To match the pollinators' probing tongues, the flowers’ cells in floral spurs elongate, driving rapid speciation.
In a first-of-its-kind study, Harvard researchers have shown that cooked meat provides more energy than raw meat, a finding that challenges the current food labeling system and suggests humans are evolutionarily adapted to take advantage of the benefits of cooking.
Using genetic tools, researchers at Harvard and collaborating institutions have completed the most comprehensive evolutionary tree ever produced for mollusks. Described in the Nov. 2 issue of Nature, the work also serves as a proof-of-concept, demonstrating the power of genomic techniques to answer difficult evolutionary questions.
In a discovery that might eventually lead to new biomedical treatments for disease, researchers from Harvard’s Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology have identified two types of RNA that are able to move between cells as part of a process called RNA-interference (RNAi).
New way to explore how life, disease work
Researchers have built a map that shows how thousands of proteins in a fruit fly cell communicate with each other. This is the largest and most detailed protein interaction map of a multicellular organism, demonstrating how approximately one-third of the proteins cooperate to keep life going.
Nose to nose with mental illness
Miami Dolphins wide receiver Brandon Marshall talked to a Harvard audience about his struggles with mental illness in a forum at Emerson Hall Oct. 24.
Gauging the effects of the BP spill
Research into the effects of last year’s massive BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico highlights the flexibility of the community of microbes living in the ocean’s depths.
Where (tiny) form follows function
A professor studies how the structure of large proteins influences how we feel heat, examining how the proteins behave and interact with molecules around them.
A Harvard study of how mice respond to scent cues from potential mates, competitors, and nearby predators has laid a foundation for further investigations that may eventually lead to a greater understanding of social recognition in the animal brain, with implications for a host of human disorders ranging from autism to post-traumatic stress disorder.
Harvard researchers have used genetic analysis to confirm that the Appalachian tiger swallowtail butterfly arose through hybridization of two other species, the Canadian and Eastern tiger swallowtails, highlighting a rare case of speciation through hybridization in animals.
The green anole lizard is an agile and active creature, and so are elements of its genome. This genomic agility and other new clues have emerged from the full sequencing of the lizard’s genome and may offer insights into how the genomes of humans, mammals, and their reptilian counterparts have evolved since mammals and reptiles parted ways 320 million years ago.
From skin cells to motor neurons
Harvard stem cell researchers have succeeded in reprogramming adult mouse skin cells directly into the type of motor neurons damaged in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, best known as Lou Gehrig's disease, and spinal muscular atrophy.
Multimedia Features
Stem cells: Mending a broken heart?
Dr. Kenneth Chien speaks about a cardiac stem cell discovery that may be the first step on the path to regenerating healthy heart muscle.
Video
2:30 run time
August 26, 2011
At last, the edible science fair
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Harvard Medical School researchers crawl a neural network
Video / Mar 9, '11
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