Epigenetic changes don't last

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck would have been delighted: geneticists no longer dismiss out of hand his belief that acquired traits can be passed on to offspring. When Darwin published his book on evolution, Lamarck's theory of transformation ...

Stressed-out tadpoles grow larger tails to escape predators

When people or animals are thrust into threatening situations such as combat or attack by a predator, stress hormones are released to help prepare the organism to defend itself or to rapidly escape from danger—the so-called ...

Researchers solve mystery of disappearing bird digit

Evolution adds and subtracts, and nowhere is this math more evident than in vertebrates, which are programmed to have five digits on each limb. But many species do not. Snakes, of course, have no digits, and birds have three.

The evolution of evolutionary developmental biology

Studying evolution by focusing solely on fossils would leave many questions unanswered, but evolutionary developmental biology (otherwise known as "evo-devo") helps fill in the gaps.

Like humans, chimps are born with immature forebrains

In both chimpanzees and humans, portions of the brain that are critical for complex cognitive functions, including decision-making, self-awareness and creativity, are immature at birth. But there are important differences, ...

Researchers succeed in making generations of mouse clones

Using the technique that created Dolly the sheep, researchers from the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology in Kobe, Japan have identified a way to produce healthy mouse clones that live a normal lifespan and can be sequentially ...

Polarity proteins shape efficient 'breathing' pores in grasses

Grasses have "respiratory pores" (called stomata) that open and close to regulate the uptake of carbon dioxide for photosynthesis on the one hand and water loss through transpiration on the other. Unlike many other plants, ...

Baby cells learn to communicate using the lsd1 gene

We would not expect a baby to join a team or participate in social situations that require sophisticated communication. Yet, most developmental biologists have assumed that young cells, only recently born from stem cells ...

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