Scientists have long puzzled over how iguanas, a group of lizards mostly found in the Americas, came to inhabit the isolated Pacific islands of Fiji and Tonga. For years, the leading explanation has been that progenitors of the island species must have rafted there, riding across the Pacific on a mat of vegetation or floating debris. But new research in the January issue of The American Naturalist suggests a more grounded explanation.

Scorpions deliver a powerful, paralyzing venom ― a complex cocktail of poisonous peptides that immobilize animal prey on the spot. Some of the toxins in this cocktail damage only insects, which is why a Tel Aviv University researcher is harnessing them to create a safe and ecologically sound pesticide.

There's more to the eye makeup that gave Queen Nefertiti and other ancient Egyptian royals those stupendous gazes and legendary beauty than meets the eye. Scientists in France are reporting that the alluring eye makeup also may have been used to help prevent or treat eye disease by doubling as an infection-fighter. Their findings are scheduled for the next (Jan. 15, 2010) issue of the American Chemical Society (ACS) semi-monthly journal, Analytical Chemistry.

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are non-coding RNAs that impact almost every aspect of biology. In recent years, they have been strongly implicated in stem cell biology, tissue and organism development, as well as human conditions ranging from mental disorders to cancer. For the most part, miRNAs control gene expression of messenger RNA (mRNA) targets. Unlike mRNAs, which are translated into proteins, miRNAs function as short, untranslated molecules that regulate specific mRNAs through base-pairing interactions. Since miRNAs bind limited stretches of consecutive bases in mRNAs, identifying which mRNAs are targets of individual miRNAs has been a bottleneck of biomedical research, as researchers have had to rely largely on computational predictions.

Ask anyone who suffers from migraine headaches what they do when they're having an attack, and you're likely to hear "go into a dark room." And although it's long been known that light makes migraines worse, the reason why has been unclear.