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Life Sciences
‘Brainbow,’ version 2.0
HarvardScience
By: Peter Reuell/
May 15, 2013
A team at Tel Aviv University in Israel and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics has just discovered an exoplanet using a new method that relies on Einstein’s special theory of relativity.
Melding the Web and the tactile
An organismic and evolutionary biology course this semester has formed a virtual classroom with other universities to examine the holdings of museum collections and the vast amount of data they contain and integrate them into the classroom.
Using an unusual decision-making study, Harvard researchers exploring the question of motivation found that rats will perform a task faster or slower depending on the size of the benefit they receive, suggesting they maintain a long-term estimate of whether it’s worthwhile for them to invest the energy.
An international team of researchers has decoded the genome of a creature whose evolutionary history is both enigmatic and illuminating: the African coelacanth
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Lest you think you’re at the top of the evolutionary heap, looking down your highly evolved nose at the earth’s lesser creatures, Marlene Zuk has a message for you: When it comes to evolution, there is no high or low, no better or worse.
In a new paper, Christopher Marx, associate professor of organismic and evolutionary biology, says that beneficial mutations may occur more often than first thought, but many never emerge as “winners” because they don’t fall within the narrow set of circumstances required for them to dominate a population.
In a new paper, Harvard researchers show that changes in coat color in mice are the result not of a single mutation, but of many mutations, all in a single gene. The results start to answer one of the fundamental questions about evolution: Does it proceed by huge leaps — single mutations that result in dramatic changes in an organism — or is it the result of many smaller changes over time?
Researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have found that even dying stars could host planets with life — and if such life exists, they believe we might be able to detect it within the next decade.
Naomi E. Pierce talked about her research on symbiosis as part of the “Evolution Matters” lecture series.
Earth-like planets potentially capable of supporting life may be right in our galactic neighborhood, according to researchers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and the California Institute of Technology.
Professor Arkhat Abzhanov explored links between dinosaurs and birds in talk kicking off a five-part series called “Evolution Matters.” The next lecture is scheduled for Feb. 12.
For more than two decades, scientists have relied on studies linking tooth development in juvenile primates with their weaning as a rough proxy for understanding similar landmarks in the evolution of early humans. New research from Harvard, however, challenges that thinking by showing that tooth development and weaning aren’t as closely related as previously thought.
Harvard stem cell biologists have proven that it is possible to turn one type of already differentiated neuron into another inside the brain, and their findings may have enormous implications for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases.
For decades, scientists wondered whether there was some subtle difference between parts of the genetic code that, while different, appear to encode the same amino acid. Harvard researchers now have the answer.
The world we live in was made possible by the precursors to plants, which crossed two evolutionary hurdles that transformed not only plant life, but also the Earth’s atmosphere and its once-barren continents, Arnold Arboretum Director William Friedman said in a recent lecture.
As described in a Jan. 16 paper in Nature, a team of researchers led by Hopi Hoekstra, professor of organismic and evolutionary biology and molecular and cellular biology, studied two species of mice – oldfield mice and deer mice – and identified four regions in their genome that appear to influence the way they dig their burrows.
Scientists at Harvard have pioneered a breakthrough technique that can reproduce an individual’s entire genome from a single cell. The development could revolutionize everything from cancer treatment, by allowing doctors to obtain a genetic fingerprint of a person’s cancer early in treatment, to prenatal testing.
As described in a Dec. 19 paper in Neuron by Venkatesh Murthy, a professor of molecular and cellular biology, researchers have, for the first time, shed light on how the neural feedback mechanism of the olfactory system works by identifying where the signals go, and which type of neurons receive them.
A team of Harvard researchers has shown that insects like crickets possess a variation of a gene — called oskar — that is critical to the production of germ cells in “higher” insects. That discovery suggests that the oskar gene emerged far earlier in insect evolution than researchers previously believed.
An associate professor at Harvard, Cassandra Extavour also heads up the Evo-Devo-Eco Network (EDEN), a collaborative group of researchers devoted to encouraging the study of nontraditional “model” organisms, ranging from sea anemones and crickets.
Aaron Ellison, a senior research fellow in ecology at Harvard Forest, has co-authored a new book, “A Field Guide to the Ants of New England.” During a discussion, he explained their pivotal importance to nature.
In a new study of worm locomotion, researchers show that a single type of motor neuron drives an entire sensorimotor loop.
Photographer and Harvard affiliate Tim Laman worked with Edwin Scholes of the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology to document all 39 species of birds of paradise.
Geneticist Elaine Ostrander runs a comparative-genomics lab that examines dog DNA to understand better the traits that might aid understanding of human diseases.
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