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biochemistry

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A sad woman stands under an umbrella that is decorated with images of brains, molecules and DNA. Rain falls on her under the umbrella but the day is otherwise clear.
neuroscience

The Cause of Depression Is Probably Not What You Think

By Joanna Thompson
January 26, 2023
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Depression has often been blamed on low levels of serotonin in the brain. That answer is insufficient, but alternatives are coming into view and changing our understanding of the disease.

Sculpted, latticed structure of a grain of olive pollen.
plants

How the ‘Diamond of the Plant World’ Helped Land Plants Evolve

By James Dinneen
July 19, 2022
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Structural studies of the robust material called sporopollenin reveal how it made plants hardy enough to reproduce on dry land.

Nobel Prize

Chemistry Nobel Prize Honors Technique for Building Molecules

By Jordana Cepelewicz
October 6, 2021
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Benjamin List and David MacMillan received the 2021 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their development of asymmetrical organocatalysis.

Electron microscopy of T4 bacteriophages.
molecular biology

DNA Has Four Bases. Some Viruses Swap in a Fifth.

By Jordana Cepelewicz
July 12, 2021
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The DNA of some viruses doesn’t use the same four nucleotide bases found in all other life. New work shows how this exception is possible and hints that it could be more common than we think.

Illustration of red spools with strands of DNA as the thread, with a blue brain in the background.
Quantized Columns

The Epigenetic Secrets Behind Dopamine, Drug Addiction and Depression

By R. Douglas Fields
October 27, 2020
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New research links serotonin and dopamine not just to addiction and depression, but to the ability to control genes.

Illustration that depicts two types of simple molecules reacting in water on the early Earth.
origins of life

New Clues to Chemical Origins of Metabolism at Dawn of Life

By John Rennie
October 12, 2020
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The ingredients for reactions ancestral to metabolism could have formed very easily in the primordial soup, new work suggests.

A DNA double helix being struck by a cosmic ray.
Abstractions blog

Cosmic Rays May Explain Life’s Bias for Right-Handed DNA

By Charlie Wood
June 29, 2020
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Cosmic rays may have given right-handed genetic helixes an evolutionary edge at the beginning of life’s history.

Art for "Mitochondria Direct the Fate of Stem Cells by Shape-Shifting"
developmental biology

Biologists Discover Unknown Powers in Mighty Mitochondria

By Diana Kwon
March 18, 2019
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Mitochondria are most famous as sources of metabolic energy. But by splitting and combining, they can also release chemical signals to regulate cell activities, including the generation of neurons.

Illustration: Viruses Find a New Way to Hijack Cells
viruses

Viruses Find a New Way to Hijack Cells

By Veronique Greenwood
December 6, 2016
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A virus that causes crippling birth defects has been shown to do something else: It changes thousands of messages coming from DNA that control normal cellular activities.


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