An ichthyologist from the Wildlife Conservation Society's New York Aquarium received the ultimate honor recently, when a freshwater fish discovered on the African island nation of Madagascar was named after him.

A new nanotechnology that can examine single molecules in order to determine gene expression, paving the way for scientists to more accurately examine single cancer cells, has been developed by an interdisciplinary team of researchers at UCLA's California Nanosystems Institute (CNSI), New York University's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, and Veeco Instruments, a nanotechnology company. Their work appears in the January issue of the journal Nanotechnology.

Elpidia glacialisUnder the former Larsen ice shelf east of the Antarctic Peninsula, deep-sea sea cucumbers and stalked feather stars were ubiquitously found in shallow waters. These animals usually inhabit far greater water depths.

The National Science Foundation has announced the award of $263,274 to Williams College biologist Claire Ting. It will support her work in exploring the structure, function and evolution of the photosynthetic apparatus in one of the most important marine primary producers of the world.

A strikingly unusual animal was recently discovered in the cloud-forests of Peru. The large rodent is about the size of a squirrel and looks a bit like one, except its closest relatives are spiny rats.

Many cancers arise due to defects in genes that normally suppress tumor growth. Now, for the first time, MIT researchers have shown that re-activating one of those genes in mice can cause tumors to shrink or disappear.

A male fish can size up potential rivals, and even rank them from strongest to weakest, simply by watching how they perform in territorial fights with other males, according to a new study by Stanford University scientists. The researchers say their discovery provides the first direct evidence that fish, like people, can use logical reasoning to figure out their place in the pecking order.

New predictions about bird flu, involving the use of a mathematical model, suggest that international cooperation to share antiviral drugs might be the best way to deal with an emerging pandemic.

Researchers are just beginning to understand the mechanisms governing the complex network interactions between plants and pollinators, such as hummingbirds, shown in this illustration from Ernst Haeckel's Kunstformen der Natur (1904). Credit: Maravall et al. A field of spring wildflowers, abuzz with busy insects seeking nectar and spreading pollen, may look like a perfect model of random interaction. But ecologists have discovered order within this anarchy. For instance, as the number of species grows, the number of interactions does too, while the connectivity (the fraction of possible interactions that actually occur) and the nestedness (the relative importance of generalist species as mutualistic partners of specialist species) shrinks.

How DNA replicates is a critical question for understanding life. DNA replication remains difficult to investigate in eukaryotes,where it occurs within the confines of the double-membrane nucleus. However, the process is far easier to study in the much simpler virus. In simian virus 40 (SV40), the large T-antigen protein (T-ag) is responsible for recognizing DNA sequences required to start replication, called the origin of replication. SV40 T-ag can also cause DNA to melt or unwind. In a new study published online in the open access journal PLoS Biology, Gretchen Meinke, Andrew Bohm, and colleagues report the crystal structure of the DNA-binding domain of SV40 T-ag on a DNA fragment derived from the viral origin of replication.

Composite (left) and reconstructed (right) skeletons of D. szalayi, the oldest known ancestor of primates. (Bloch, et al./ PNAS) The origins and earliest branches of primate evolution are clearer and more ancient by 10 million years than previous studies estimated, according to a study featured on the cover of the Jan. 23 print edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.