Featured series 
Tag: biology
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Nation & World
Women more likely to suffer drug side effects, but reason may not be biology
Studies debunk prevailing belief, highlight series of gender-based social factors
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Nation & World
Oh. My. Gourd.
The stunt was a fundraiser for Harvard OpenBio, a student-run laboratory aimed at democratizing biology.
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Nation & World
Wonders never cease
Henry Cerbone spent his time at Harvard drawing on many intellectual threads in his effort to explore and understand the world.
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Nation & World
5 faculty members named Harvard College Professors
They are recognized for excellence in teaching in fields ranging from biophysics to cultural studies.
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Nation & World
How mutant protein leads to melanoma
Discovery of new mechanism could have wide implications for other cancers.
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Nation & World
The star chemist
Junior Fellow Mireille Kamariza is an award-winning scientist and entrepreneur, who was recognized for inventing a portable, low-cost diagnostic tool to detect tuberculosis.
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Nation & World
How a zebrafish model may hold a key to biology
Martin Haesemeyer set out to build an artificial neural network that worked differently than fish’s brains, but what he got was a system that almost perfectly mimicked the zebrafish — and that could be a powerful tool for understanding biology.
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Nation & World
At the corner of med and tech
Undergraduate Michael Chen, who created an extraordinary program to help treat TB, also works with a student program to treat ordinary patients.
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Nation & World
‘An era where it has never not been about drugs’
The Gazette spoke with History of Science Professor Anne Harrington about her new book, “Mind Fixers: Psychiatry’s Troubled Search for the Biology of Mental Illness,” which traces the treatment of mental disorders from its early years to the Prozac Nation of today.
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Nation & World
Microbial manufacturing
Emily Balskus and a team of researchers untangled how soil bacteria are able to manufacture streptozotocin, an antibiotic and anti-cancer compound.
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Nation & World
How violence pointed to virtue
Richard Wrangham’s new book examines the strange relationship between good and evil.
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Nation & World
Bringing biology and mathematics together
The National Science Foundation and the Simons Foundation have awarded a grant to Harvard scientists to create a research center aimed at bringing biologists and mathematicians together to answer some of the central questions about living systems.
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Nation & World
Biology without borders
To increase scientific understanding of biological systems, Harvard is launching an interdisciplinary research effort called the Quantitative Biology Initiative, with support from University President Drew Faust and Dean Michael D. Smith.
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Nation & World
Study identifies hundreds of genetic ‘switches’ that affect height
Researchers discovered hundreds of genetic “switches” that influence height, then performed tests that demonstrated how one such switch altered the function of a key gene involved in height difference.
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Nation & World
Bees, social and solitary
Harvard study reveals underlying genetic basis for halictid bee communication and social behavior.
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Nation & World
In the comings and goings of shopping week, first impressions matter
The first week of each semester is known as “shopping week” at Harvard, during which students are encouraged to try out classes before formally registering.
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Nation & World
Lab opens doors for an undergrad experience
As part of Harvard’s Wintersession, a handful of freshmen got the chance to experience the reality of lab work by exploring how altering genes in yeast affected the cells’ functions.
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Nation & World
Diamonds are a lab’s best friend
Using the atomic-scale quantum defects in diamonds known as nitrogen-vacancy centers to detect the magnetic field generated by neural signals, scientists working in the lab of Ronald Walsworth, a faculty member in Harvard’s Center for Brain Science and Physics Department, demonstrated a noninvasive technique that can show the activity of neurons.
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Nation & World
Finding biological barcodes
Two recent studies have shown that cells early in development can be marked with a genetic barcode that later can be used to reconstruct their lineage.
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Nation & World
Harvard biologist is first woman to lead HHMI
Erin O’Shea, the Paul C. Mangelsdorf Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology and of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, has been named the sixth president of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
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Nation & World
Deep dive
The Harvard Museum of Natural History opens a new marine life gallery, which uses the seas off New England as a lens for learning about marine life around the world.
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Nation & World
Paris as a living thing
During a summer program, Harvard students and their French counterparts drew on biology to sketch solutions to everyday problems in Paris.
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Nation & World
Cracking the egg
Mary Caswell Stoddard of Harvard’s Society of Fellows is bringing an interdisciplinary approach to her study of bird eggs.
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Nation & World
Keys to a split-second slime attack
Researchers from the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and from universities in Chile, Costa Rica, and Brazil have been studying the secret power of the velvet worm.
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Nation & World
The biologist in charge
Beetle biologist Brian Farrell is taking the reins of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, with an eye toward increasing collaboration between Harvard scientists and those at institutions in the region. The center will also get a new executive director, Ned Strong, former director of the Chilean office.
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Nation & World
James Newton Butler
At a Meeting of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences on October 1, 2013, the Minute honoring the life and service of the late James Newton Butler, Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Chemistry, Emeritus, was placed upon the records. Professor Butler was acclaimed for his research on ionic equilibrium and pelagic tar in the North…
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Nation & World
Rules of evolution
For most people, rock-paper-scissors is a game used to settle disputes on the playground. For biologists, however, it is a powerful guide for understanding the key role mutation plays in…
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Nation & World
Mars rover, slightly used, runs fine
Originally scheduled to operate on the Red Planet’s surface for 90 Martian days, the rover Opportunity has now logged more than 3,500 days, traveled nearly 39 kilometers, and collected a trove of data that scientists have used to study the planet’s early history, particularly any past traces of water.
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Nation & World
New plan of attack in cancer fight
Harvard Professor Martin Nowak and Ivana Bozic, a postdoctoral fellow in mathematics, show that, under certain conditions, using two drugs in a “targeted therapy” — a treatment approach designed to interrupt cancer’s ability to grow and spread — could effectively cure nearly all cancers.
