From symmetry to asymmetry: The two sides of life

On the outside, animals often appear bilaterally symmetrical with mirror-image left and right features. However, this balance is not always reflected internally, as several organs such as the lungs and intestines are left-right ...

Hope for infertile men: Mice could hold the secret

Male infertility affects more than 20 million men globally and is a contributing cause to around 50% of infertility in couples. Frequently, male infertility is the result of defects in the sperm tail, the flagellum, which ...

A rice fish model of a rare metabolic disorder

Human cells are kept healthy by the activity of millions of proteins. These proteins are modified in different ways, such as by adding sugar molecules to them, which can be crucial for them to function properly. Given this ...

Researchers improve efficiency and accessibility of CRISPR

One of the most powerful tools available to biologists these days is CRISPR-Cas9, a combination of specialized RNA and protein that acts like a molecular scalpel, allowing researchers to precisely slice and dice pieces of ...

Birds take flight with help from Sonic hedgehog

Feathers are amazing evolutionary innovations that allowed birds to conquer the sky. A study led by Matthew Towers (University of Sheffield, UK) and Marian Ros (University of Cantabria, Spain) and published in the journal ...

'Census' in the zebrafish's brain

The zebrafish is a master of regeneration: If brain cells are lost due to injury or disease, it can simply reproduce them—contrary to humans, where this only happens in the fetal stage. However, the zebrafish is evolutionarily ...

Special cells contribute to regenerate the heart in zebrafish

It is already known that zebrafish can flexibly regenerate their hearts after injury. An international research group led by Prof. Nadia Mercader of the University of Bern now shows that certain heart muscle cells play a ...

Embryo's early development revealed in a dish

During embryonic development, the entire nervous system, the skin and the sensory organs emerge from a single sheet of cells known as the ectoderm. While there have been extensive studies of how this sheet forms all these ...

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