“In the beginning, there was simplicity” Richard Dawkins, “The selfish gene”, chapter 2 The question of how life began on Earth is as old as the human race and has occupied the thoughts and time of scientists and philosophers for centuries, often causing conflict throughout history. From a scientific point of view, the several possibilities […]
Most leaves are various shades of green. This is due to the chlorophylls. The name chlorophyll comes from the Greek words chloros (green) and phyllon (leaf). There are six types of chlorophylls in plants. The two main chlorophylls are chlorophyll a and chlorophyll b. Chlorophyll a absorbs purple and orange light the most. Chlorophyll b […]
Color patterns are important features of lots of animals, having key functions in protection against UV irradiation, camouflage, shoaling or sexual selection. Color patterns in birds and mammals are generated by a particular type of cell called melanocyte which produces melanin and transfers it to the tissues of fur or plumage. In fish, amphibia and […]
The ribosome may be a missing link in the evolution of life. This suggestive proposal has been published by Meredith Root-Bernstein, Oxford University, UK, and her father Robert Root-Bernstein, Michigan State University, USA, in the Journal of Theoretical Biology . Their hypothesis is that primordial ribosomes were self-replicating intermediates between the prebiotic world and the […]
On 6 June, 1944 (also termed “the D-day”), the Allied army irrupted into the shores of western France in what was called the Invasion of Normandy, during the last stages of World War II. The operation began with hundreds of amphibian landing vehicles emerging from the sea and unloading their cargo – the Infantry divisions […]
In the 1930s Clive McCay, a biochemist working in Ithaca, New York, made an interesting observation: rats that were kept on a low calorie diet lived longer than rats that had unrestrained access to food. In the next years this seemingly counterintuitive observation was extended to virtually all animals, including worms, flies and other rodents […]
Biochemistry • Biology • Materials • Molecular biology • Neuroscience
Some jellyfish species are beautifully fluorescent in the dark ocean, emitting light from different parts of their bodies in a process that is thought to help them to warn off predators. The molecular biology behind this process of glowing is possible thanks to one of the most famous proteins in molecular biology, the green fluorescent […]
In some beaches of Madagascar you can find in the sand, if you are lucky, fragments of egg shells that seem oddly large. They used to be, in fact, part of huge bird eggs, massive as watermelons (and able to become the most memorable omelet ever), laid by the avian titans: the extinct elephant birds […]
Although not the most important among the many different animals studied by Charles Darwin during his amazing journeys on board the Beagle, the little finches from the Galápagos Islands have become one of the most popular representatives of Darwin’s theory of natural selection. They embody the process of speciation forced by environmental conditions, in the […]
DNA damage is one of the most deleterious forms of cellular damage. If unrepaired, DNA lesions can create genomic instability, a hallmark of cancer . As most of the DNA is confined to the nucleus, for many years the study of DNA damage response has mainly focused on its nuclear effects, including mechanisms such as […]