Return of the worms

Meet some of the people featured in the December 2021 issue of The Scientist.

Scientific advances almost always have the potential to benefit human lives. In times like these, they have the power to save them.

Take a break from the bench to puzzle and peruse

Selecting researchers who will drive research agendas forward requires a more quantitative approach to interviewing.

By viewing countless hours of expectorating worms, researchers discover a unique way in which neurons control the movement of muscles.

In just 16 months, physicians went from identifying a novel rare disease in three-year-old Marley to successfully treating her with a drug previously used to treat African sleeping sickness and pediatric cancer.

Researchers identified a novel mechanism by which chemically induced stress is “remembered” by the mitochondria of worms more than 50 generations after the original trigger.

Shared features, such as thick, slimy skin and a throat filled with teeth, suggest that medusafishes are all related.

Researchers provide evidence that the Alzheimer’s-associated protein calibrates a signaling pathway that is conserved across the animal kingdom.

The University of California, Santa Barbara, cell biologist is investigating the formation and functions of the peroxisome, an organelle which exists in many copies in each cell and can be created, lost, or altered to meet the cell’s metabolic needs.

RNA editing has been in DNA editing’s shadow for nearly a decade, but recent investments in the technology could bring it into the limelight.

To solve modern problems, we must integrate the sciences and the humanities and think across these traditionally disparate disciplines.

Researchers continue to debate whether US President Abraham Lincoln was coming down with smallpox as he delivered his famous Gettysburg Address, and if he had been immunized.

Neurons stressed with chemicals produce Wnt, which in turn triggers changes in the germline.

Research in animals and people supports a range of mechanisms by which the parasites affect physiology and immune responses.

RNA editing platforms leverage the natural activity of ADAR enzymes to make key changes to messenger RNAs before they are translated into proteins.