eLife Magazine

Highlighting the latest research and giving a voice to scientists
Microscopy image of a fruit fly. Image credit: USGS (CC0)

How experience shapes individuality

Behavioural diversity across fruit flies changes with individual learning, even when genetic, past and momentary environmental factors are held constant.

Bassem A Hassan
Insight
  • Mountain gorilla. Image credit: Greg Gollin (CC0)

    eLife Podast: Listen to our latest episode

    Listen to how male gorillas trade size for sperm quality, how fever changes the stickiness of malaria-infected cells, the neuroscience behind gambling machines, whether babies are born hardwired to dance, and how bird eggs have adapted to life at high altitudes.

    Podcast
  • Image credit: tama66 (CC0)

    How monkeys carve up the visual world

    Monkeys generalize many visual categorization rules, such as animate versus inanimate, but fail on culturally defined ones, placing their behavior closer to networks trained on images alone than to humans.

    Binxu Wang
    Insight
  • Aedes Mosquito bite by an Aedes mosquito. Image credit: NIAID (CC0)

    Mathematical models optimise mosquito net distribution

    Tailoring malaria control interventions to regional transmission dynamics and behavioural characteristics can optimise them in resource-limited settings.

    Carlos A Prete Jr
    Insight

Latest articles

    1. Genetics and Genomics

    Environmental Learning: How experience shapes individuality

    Bassem A Hassan
    Behavioural diversity across fruit flies changes with individual learning, even when genetic, past and momentary environmental factors are held constant.
    Version of Record
    Insight
  1. Point of View: Scientific writing is not a murder mystery

    Charlotte A Dodson
    What murder mysteries can tell us about how not to write a scientific article.
    1. Neuroscience

    Visual Categorization: How monkeys carve up the visual world

    Binxu Wang
    Monkeys generalize many visual categorization rules, such as animate versus inanimate, but fail on culturally defined ones, placing their behavior closer to networks trained on images alone than to humans.
    Version of Record
    Insight
    1. Cell Biology

    Stress: How to give cells an identity crisis

    Paige Dillon, Julie Hollien
    The transcription factor CHOP helps cells switch from an emergency stress response to a chronic one, where cells survive but lose some of the functions that define their identity.
    Version of Record
    Insight
    1. Epidemiology and Global Health

    Malaria Prevention: Using mathematical models to optimise mosquito net distribution

    Carlos A Prete Jr
    Tailoring malaria control interventions to regional transmission dynamics and behavioural characteristics can optimise them in resource-limited settings.
    Version of Record
    Insight
    1. Plant Biology

    Mixotrophy: An updated view of glucose pathways in cyanobacteria

    José Manuel García-Fernández
    Contrary to previous belief, the cyanobacterium Synechocystis lacks the Entner-Doudoroff pathway for glucose metabolism.
    Version of Record
    Insight
  2. Mountain gorilla

    Episode 104: July 2026

    In this episode, we explore how male gorillas trade size for sperm production, how fever changes the stickiness of malaria-infected cells, the neuroscience behind gambling machines, whether babies are born hardwired to dance, and how bird eggs have adapted to life at high altitudes.
    1. Cell Biology
    2. Developmental Biology

    Organ Development: Following your heart as it takes shape

    Alexandra Trouilloud, Nicole C Dubois
    A novel computational pipeline reveals patterns of tissue movement and growth in early heart formation and advances virtual modeling of development.
    Version of Record
    Insight
    1. Cancer Biology

    Tumor Biology: The two faces of JAK-STAT

    Qianying Lu, Yingyi Zhang
    A signal that can help breast cancer cells grow may also increase immune responses and boost immune therapy.
    Version of Record
    Insight
    1. Neuroscience

    Brain Mapping: Understanding the cellular architecture of Huntington’s disease

    Dorian Pustina
    A new diffusion MRI approach offers a glimpse of the anomalies of cellular architecture underlying basal ganglia degeneration in Huntington’s disease.
    Version of Record
    Insight