New research from Philipp Holliger’s group in the LMB’s PNAC Division demonstrates the power RNA could have wielded to enable the first forms of life on Earth to reproduce and thrive. At its most basic level, all life can be viewed as a mechanism for self-replication: organisms reproduce by making new copies of themselves and […]
Insight on Research
Discovery of the genetic basis of a rare immune disease
Work led by Sergey Nejentsev and Alison Condliffe from the University of Cambridge, in collaboration with Roger Williams’ group in the LMB’s PNAC Division, the Babraham Institute has discovered a rare genetic disease which predisposes patients to severe respiratory infections and lung damage. They have also identified how the genetic mutation affects the immune system […]
Understanding timekeeping in an intertidal marine crustacean
Work carried out by Michael Hastings’ group in the LMB Neurobiology’s Division, together with collaborators at Leicester, Bangor and Aberystwyth Universities has combined expertise in molecular genetics and marine biology to address a long-standing question about tidal behaviour in marine organisms. They were interested in whether these animals are driven by a dedicated internal tidal […]
Vesicles modulate an actin network for asymmetric spindle positioning in oocytes
Work carried out by Melina Schuh’s group in the LMB’s Cell Biology Division has provided new insights into how the spindle is asymmetrically positioned in oocytes, which is a vital step in the development of a fertilizable egg in mammals. The oocyte is stored in the ovary in meiotic arrest until ovulation. At ovulation, the […]
Identifying behavioural functions for genes has produced a key resource for neuroscience research
While fully sequenced genomes are available for many important experimental organisms, a major challenge has been to identify the functions of the genes identified. A method for phenotyping that is both high-throughput, so all an organism’s genes can be phenotyped, and high-content, so inferences about gene function can be made with precision, has been required. […]
The smell of food ‘wakes up’ the zebrafish visual system
New research from Leon Lagnado’s group in the LMB’s Neurobiology Division shows how food-related smells ‘re-tune’ zebrafish vision by making the retina more sensitive to moving objects, such as the prey that zebrafish eat. The way the brain processes information from one sense depends on the activity of other senses. For instance, we all know […]