Natural products, or their close derivatives, make some of our most potent medicines, among which macrocycles with their large carbon-rich ring systems are one class. The size and complexity of macrocycles has made it difficult ...
Biochemistry
Jun 11, 2019
0
3
What would happen if the hands of time were turned back to an arbitrary point in our evolutionary history and we restarted the clock? American paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould proposed this famous thought experiment in the ...
Evolution
Jun 6, 2019
10
47
Measles cases in the US have hit a 25-year high, with 78 new infections in the past week alone. In a sign of the times, a cruise ship with hundreds of Scientologists on board was quarantined in St Lucia after one passenger ...
Evolution
May 6, 2019
3
61
Bacteria across our planet contain nanometer-sized factories that do many different things. Some make nutrients, others isolate toxic materials that could harm the bacteria. We have barely scratched the surface of their functional ...
Bio & Medicine
May 3, 2019
0
213
If you've ever spent some time in the Caribbean, you might have noticed that humans are not the only organisms soaking up the sun. Anoles—diminutive little tree lizards—spend much of their day shuttling in and out of ...
Evolution
Apr 22, 2019
1
242
Words are often seen as the building blocks of languages. But as children we don't learn lists of words like we might in a school language class. We learn longer strings of sounds and break them up into words as we grow up. ...
Social Sciences
Apr 5, 2019
2
10
Richard Wrangham has been studying chimpanzees at the Kibale Chimpanzee Project in Uganda since 1987, when he founded the research center. A student of famed primatologist Jane Goodall, Harvard's Ruth B. Moore Professor of ...
Evolution
Jan 29, 2019
0
2
To female molly and Limia fish, nothing is hotter than a male with a large dorsal fin. But these fins aren't just decorations to attract females.
Evolution
Jan 17, 2019
0
85
Modern medicine's ability to keep us alive makes it tempting to think human evolution may have stopped. Better healthcare disrupts a key driving force of evolution by keeping some people alive longer, making them more likely ...
Evolution
Nov 14, 2018
3
100
Evolution by Darwinian natural selection is immensely powerful—both in nature and within laboratories. Using 'laboratory evolution', we can take an enzyme which combines random mutations and functional selection, and improve ...
Biochemistry
Sep 12, 2018
12
280
