In this episode we hear about drug resistance, severe brain damage, sugar versus sweetener, public goods dilemmas, and the evolution of the machinary that makes proteins in cells.
New experiments and theory reveal how the ability to see image details depends upon photoreceptor function and eye movements, and how fruit flies (Drosophila) see spatial details beyond the optical limit of their compound eyes.
A new system for tagging activated neuronal population offers multiple advantages over existing systems based on immediate early genes, including greater sensitivity and specificity, and suitability for easy application in species other than mice.
Dopamine, a reward signal in the brain, can retroactively convert hippocampal synaptic depression into potentiation, suggesting an elegant biological solution to the distal reward problem.
A continuum of genome relationships is discovered through comparative genomics of 627 sequenced mycobacteriophages isolated and characterized in an integrated research/education initiative.
The three-dimensional structures of 50 sensory cilia present in the head of the adult C. elegans hermaphrodite have been reconstructed to provide a foundation for investigations into the mechanisms by which the diversity of cilia structures is generated and how this structural diversity is related to specific sensory neuron functions.
The timing of sexual differentiation in the brain of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans is controlled by a phylogenetically conserved pathway of gene regulatory factors.
Humans and other animals have different strategies for extracting the pitch of sounds, potentially driven by the species-specific frequency selectivity of the ear.
