Evolutionary Biology

Modern crocodiles live in rivers, streams, and forests, using their snouts and strong jaws to catch fish, snakes, birds, and mammals. However, recent research published today in the Royal Society B journal Proceedings suggests that ancient crocodiles were once even more diverse due to accelerated evolution. Various Ancient Crocodile Species.Read Full StorySnappyAnimal SpeciesBirdsMammalsLive AnimalsThalattosuchiansNotosuchiansSenior Research AssociateHarvard UniversityModern CrocodilesAncient CrocodilesExtinct CrocodilesAdaptationEvolution BiologyThe SecretMichael Benton

By offering cells a microscopic 'tightrope,' Johns Hopkins University and Virginia Tech scientists have discovered a new and surprising form of cellular movement. Normally when cells crawling in an organism come into contact, they reverse and move randomly away from the other cell. But when nanofiber 'tightropes' coated with proteins were suspended in a three-dimensional medium for cells to explore, cells either walked past each other to avoid a collision or formed a train moving together along the length of the nanofiber.Read Full StoryCell BiologyMicroscopicCell MigrationTightropeTime-lapse PhotographyHuman CellsMouse CellsMolecular BiologyHuman BehaviorJohns Hopkins UniversityVirginia Tech 'sCamleyCell InteractionsCell BehaviorsCell Collisions

Hummingbird hawkmoths are small insects that hover in the air like hummingbirds when drinking nectar from flowers. Dr. Anna Stöckl from the Biocentre of the Julius-Maximilians-Universität (JMU) Würzburg in Bavaria, Germany, is studying the visual performance of these insects. Dr. Stöckl and her doctoral student Ronja Bigge now present their latest findings in the journal Current Biology.Read Full StoryVisual FieldFlowersLandscapeJMUCurrent BiologyAAASEurekAlertVisual TexturesOutdoor MeasurementsOptic FlowHigh-contrast StructuresProminent ContoursOrientationNatural HabitatsRonja Bigge

Scientists from the Graduate School of Information Science and Technology at The University of Tokyo calculated the efficiency of the sensory network that bacteria use to move towards food and found it to be optimal from an information theory standpoint. This work may lead to a better understanding of bacterial behavior and their sensory networks.Read Full StoryE. ColiCalculusDerivativeChemical InformationEvolutionary TheoryInformation SystemsOptimal FilteringBacterial BehaviorSingle-celled OrganismsBacterial ChemotaxisInformation TheoryReceptorsSensory SystemsScientistsEnvironmental ConditionsKento Nakamura

Arabic for Beginners has been offered by the Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies at Tel Aviv University for many years, with several dozen students interested in the Arabic language and Islamic culture enrolling each year. But after an online version of the course had been developed last year, University...Read Full StoryTel Aviv UniversityArabic LanguageOnline StudentsThe Administrative StaffThe Academic FacultyUniversity ManagementArabic StudiesSpoken ArabicLiteratureProf. ShavitProf. Uriya ShavitIsraeli SocietyBiologyTheaterDeclensionsAriel Porat

Researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania have produced a detailed molecular atlas of lung development, which is expected to be a fundamental reference in future studies of mammalian biology and of new treatments for diseases, such as COVID-19, that affect the lungs. The researchers,...Read Full StoryPremature BabiesBacteriaAtlasCell BiologySingle CellMolecular BiologyGenesScience ExperimentsHuman CellsThe Robinette FoundationPenn MedicineRNASCMFHuman Lung DevelopmentMolecular Signals

Acta Pharmacologica Sinica (2020)Cite this article. A series of 6-substituted carbazole-based retinoic acid-related orphan receptor gamma-t (RORγt) modulators were discovered through 6-position modification guided by insights from the crystallographic profiles of the “short” inverse agonist 6. With the increase in the size of the 6-position substituents, the “short” inverse agonist 6 first reversed its function to agonists and then to “long” inverse agonists. The cocrystal structures of RORγt complexed with the representative “short” inverse agonist 6 (PDB: 6LOB), the agonist 7d (PDB: 6LOA) and the “long” inverse agonist 7h (PDB: 6LO9) were revealed by X-ray analysis. However, minor differences were found in the binding modes of “short” inverse agonist 6 and “long” inverse agonist 7h. To further reveal the molecular mechanisms of different RORγt inverse agonists, we performed molecular dynamics simulations and found that “short” or “long” inverse agonists led to different behaviors of helixes H11, H11’, and H12 of RORγt. The “short” inverse agonist 6 destabilizes H11’ and dislocates H12, while the “long” inverse agonist 7h separates H11 and unwinds H12. The results indicate that the two types of inverse agonists may behave differently in downstream signaling, which may help identify novel inverse agonists with different regulatory mechanisms.Read Full Story Retinoic AcidCrystallographyRorOrphanBiological CellsCancer CellsSynthetic BiologyCell BiologyH11 'Tadokoro CELepelley ASun NW. MolecularArista LNemunaitis J

Three winners and six finalists were announced on Wednesday. Indian American Shruti Puri, a postdoctoral researcher at Yale University, has been named one of the finalists in this year’s Blavatnik Regional Awards for Y

Credit: Public Domain CC0.A standard test that assesses blood cells can identify which patients who are admitted to the hospital with COVID-19 face a high risk of becoming critically ill and dying.This discovery, which i

Striking new videos show how RNA - the genetic molecule that tells cells how to build proteins - tangles up in insane knots as it forms, only to disentangle itself at the last second, and in a way that took scientists by surprise. The high-resolution videos depict a bouncing conga...Read Full StoryRna VirusesRna MoleculesFoldingSingle CellsExperimental DataMolecular BiologyBiological CellsRNA TanglesRNA FormationRNA VirusesSNP RNADark Purple KnotComplex KnotsBasic Cell BiologyInsane Knots