Rapid Evolution

Meet some of the people featured in the May 2017 issue of The Scientist.

Science’s lowest common denominator has always been patterns.

Climate change, research funding, race, and much more

The giant lizards have numerous microbicidal compounds in their blood.

Teams of modelers compete to develop algorithms for estimating how people will perceive a particular odor from its molecular characteristics.

The green peach aphid can colonize new host plants with ease through rapid changes in gene expression.

Researchers are redesigning the humble brick to produce electricity, to clean water and air, and to harvest valuable compounds.

Taking into account the interaction of nuclear and mitochondrial genes in birds holds the promise of more objectively defining what constitutes a species.

Incorporating light-controlled dimerization domains into kinases provides tight regulation of these enzymes.

From fish harvests to cottonwood forests, organisms display evidence that species change can occur on timescales that can influence ecological processes.

Time-lapse imaging shows the immune cells transferring chemical signals during pigment pattern formation in developing zebrafish.

Scientists discover transcripts from the same gene that can express both proteins and noncoding RNA.
 

A new approach to immunotherapy finds that the immune-cell clonotypes that come to the rescue start out at very low frequencies.

Ben Barres recast glial cells from supporting actors to star performers, crucial for synaptic plasticity in the brain and for preventing neurodegenerative disorders.

The Yale University cell and molecular biologist is probing the deep mysteries of epidermal cells.

Machine-learning algorithms can automate the analysis of cell images and data.

The scientific community struggles to define the duties of collaborators in assuring the integrity of published research.

One person’s quest to get to the bottom of the unique way he experiences food

The 19th century biologist’s drawings, tainted by scandal, helped bolster, then later dismiss, his biogenetic law.