Development
The Eel-Like Fish With a Human-Like Spine
By Rob Mitchum Us land animals like to think we’re so special. For instance, our spines are typically organized into five regions — cervical, thoracic, lumbar, sacral, and caudal — each with their own distinct vertebral anatomy. Because aquatic species often have much simpler spinal morphology, usually split into mere body and tail segments, paleontologists […]
Alan Turing’s Underrated Biology
By Rob Mitchum Alan Turing is best known as the father of the modern computer, a skillful World War II codebreaker, and a pioneer in the study of artificial intelligence. But in the last years before Turing’s death at age 41, he aimed his genius at a different target: the then-stalled field of developmental biology. […]
The Secret Origin of the Vertebrate Brain
By Rob Mitchum The acorn worm is an eye-less, ear-less invertebrate that lives in the intertidal zone, scavenging food particles from the sand and water. One wouldn’t expect to find the developmental clues for the creation of the vertebrate brain in such a humble creature. But a new study led by a University of Chicago […]
Trajectories: Gender and Racial Differences in Substance Use
By Matt Wood Substance use among adolescents and young adults in the United States is a perennial problem. Despite decades of campaigns by health care providers, schools and the government warning about the dangers of alcohol, tobacco and marijuana, substantial numbers of young people still report using these substances on a regular basis. Research has […]
A Fishfinder for the “Junk DNA” Seas
In a way, the Human Genome Project had it easy. Sure, mapping the roughly 23,000 genes active in humans was one of the most important scientific achievements of all time, but those genes are only part of the story. In fact, the protein-coding sequences only occupy about 1.5% of the roughly 3 billion base pairs […]
Dr. FAQ: Sharon Hirsch on Autism
Here at ScienceLife, we often focus on fresh laboratory findings that could be years away from being applied to patients in a clinic. Popular newspapers and magazines, meanwhile, sometimes get caught up in controversies surrounding health and medicine without focusing in on core questions that many patients have about common diseases and conditions. And with […]
An Exhaustive Neuroscience 2009 Preview
As described on Monday and hinted at all week, this weekend marks the start of Neuroscience 2009, the annual mega-conference of more than 30,000 neuroscientists. After years of staging the meeting in areas with distractingly nice climates such as New Orleans, Orlando and San Diego, this year should be all business with the rainy chill […]
From Cancer Villain to B-Cell Hero
In each cell of the body is a busy factory, containing all of the elements needed for that cell to develop and perform its unique function. A neuron sprouts a long extension and develops the ability to conduct electrical impulses. A liver cell secretes bile and can absorb toxic substances to neutralize them. Muscle cells […]
How the Skull Supervises Brain Development
The development of the human brain is a massive biological construction project that scientists are still only beginning to understand. From the first few cells of the human embryo, billions of neurons and glia cells must be formed and positioned in exactly the right place with all of the proper connections. Hundreds of genes, chemical […]
