Here is an artist's drawing of the abelisaur. An unidentified fossilised bone in a museum has revealed the size of a fearsome abelisaur and may have solved a hundred-year old puzzle.

HDAC5 (red) is a key factor in neurons for the control of food intake, astrocytes are stained in green. Why do we get fat and why is it so difficult for so many people to keep off excess weight? Researchers in the Reseach Unit Neurobiology of Diabetes led by Dr. Paul Pfluger and at the Institute for Diabetes and Obesity led by Prof. Dr. Matthias Tschöp have now identified a new component in the complex fine-tuning of body weight and food intake. They found that the enzyme histone deacetylase 5 (HDAC5) has a significant influence on the effect of the hormone leptin*. This hormone plays a crucial role in triggering satiety and thus on how the body adapts to a changing food environment.

Sometimes evolution proceeds much more rapidly than we might think. Genetic analysis makes it possible to detect the earliest stages of species formation and to gain a better understanding of speciation processes. For example, a study just published in PLOS Genetics by researchers from Eawag and the University of Bern - investigating rapid speciation in threespine stickleback in and around Lake Constance - shows that a species can begin to diverge very rapidly, even when the two daughter species breed alongside one another simultaneously.

Dr. David Gangitano is an associate professor in the Department of Forensic Science at Sam Houston State University. Sam Houston State University is advancing the field of forensic botany with the publication of two recent studies that use marijuana DNA to link drug supplies and pollen DNA to aid in forensic investigations.