Cell Matters

Although my time at The Scientist has drawn to a close, I am consistently surprised by science.

The key to averting cataclysmic events, such as pandemics, climate change, and mass extinction of species, lies partly in what’s on our plates.

For too long, some scientists have acted like Gollums of the ivory tower, guarding precious study sites, model organisms, and even entire fields of inquiry.

The broken-wing display, in which birds fake being wounded to protect their nests from predators, is found across the avian phylogenetic tree, a study finds.

A survey of more than 200 whale skulls has unveiled bursts of evolution over the past 50 million years.

A decade-long, multicontinent study suggests that acoustic defense strategies are more common among moths than previously imagined.

Researchers race to find ecological data kept on outdated media or in dusty backroom boxes—before they’re lost forever.

The MIT biologist studies how RNA molecules self-assemble and the role these accumulations may play in diseases such as ALS and Huntington’s.

The Duke University cell biologist uses live-cell microscopy to reveal how brain cells rid themselves of damaged mitochondria and what goes wrong in neurodegenerative disease.

Analyzing organoids has proven slow and cumbersome for scientists. But a new technique may speed things up, producing 3D images of hundreds of organoids per hour.

The relative sizes of specific parts of the guppy brain may explain why some fish are better at learning certain tasks than others. 

The discovery of gene variants in cases of hereditary spastic dysplasia could provide a diagnosis to affected families where no genetic cause could be found before.

Expected increases in lightning strikes due to climate change could alter the botanical composition of tropical forests.

The ability to activate different sets of genes has likely helped the chytrid fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis spread widely in amphibians, resulting in global population declines. 

An unexpected find shows that sweet-sensing receptors also help epithelial cells in Drosophila larvae stay alive amid proteotoxic stress.

A biotech startup called Tessera Therapeutics has made a splash with its claims about the trademarked technology. Is the excitement justified?

Scientists, students, and administrative staff are working to bring about a cultural shift to mitigate the impact of research on the environment.

When species disappear, more than their genomes are lost. The potential for their creative innovation to benefit ecosystems vanishes as well.

In Pests: How Humans Create Animal Villains, I explore what it is that makes an animal a pest—and it has nothing to do with their behavior, but rather our own desires and beliefs about the natural world.

Pioneering nurse Florence Nightingale had an eye for creating memorable graphics that helped convince the general population that including sanitation reforms as part of public health policy would save British soldiers’ lives.

German physician and sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld founded a revolutionary clinic where transgender people could receive gender-affirming care, but he left behind a complicated medical and scientific legacy.

A lot happened in the hundreds of millions years separating the first and last eukaryotic common ancestors, but when and how most features arose remains a mystery.

Various microbes, including several human pathogens, hijack the cell’s skeleton, membranes, and protein-making machinery to make themselves at home.

Pregnancy-induced changes in the immune system are key to a successful birth. Understanding those changes could allow researchers to protect both mother and child.

By modifying a technique used to image single cells, researchers have managed to generate a super-resolution 3D image of a complete organoid in just seven seconds.

While guppies with larger optic lobes were champions at learning visual discrimination tasks, guppies with larger telencephalons fared better when researchers switched things up.