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Harriet the tortoise turns 175
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In search of the smart orangutan

For plants, the ability to accurately sense light governs everything from seed germination, photosynthesis and pigmentation to patterns of growth and flowering.

Researchers have gained the most detailed view yet of the heart of the translocon, a channel through which newly constructed proteins are inserted into the cell membrane. The process of transporting proteins across or into membranes is a critical function that occurs in every cell.

Biswarup Mukhopadhyay and Eric Johnson from the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech have discovered a novel enzyme that represents an ancient detoxification system and provides a clue to the development of early metabolism on earth.

When amateur fossil finder Van Turner discovered a small vertebra at a construction site near Dallas 17 years ago, he knew the creature was unlike anything in the fossil record. Scientists now know the significance of Turner's fossil as the origin of an extinct line of lizards with an evolutionary twist: a land-dwelling species that became fully aquatic.

Scientists from Imperial College London have successfully converted human embryonic stem cells into cartilage cells, offering encouragement that replacement cartilage could one day be grown for transplantation.

New brain cells that develop in the olfactory system of adult mice appear to play a role in the brain different from that of older neurons. The new olfactory neurons are especially sensitive to novel stimuli, preferentially learning to respond to new odors. This level of flexibility suggests that such newly-generated neurons could be induced to adapt to and integrate into other regions of the brain, perhaps allowing them to replace neurons lost to injury or disease. The report from researchers at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH)-Harvard Medical School (HMS) Center for Nervous System Repair (CNSR) appears in the Nov. 16 Journal of Neuroscience.

Although lead is a well-known human health hazard, researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center have discovered a new aspect of how it may work in mice to harm the function of T-cells, which regulate the body's immune response to bacteria, viruses and other bugs.

In a bid to facilitate collaboration among other biomolecular researchers, the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has become the first institution outside the United Kingdom to join the Biological Simulation Grid Consortium of Great Britain.