A 2-year field study has demonstrated that volatile compounds produced by plants when they are attacked by herbivores act as defenses by attracting predators to the herbivores and increasing the reproduction of the plants.

Similarities in the way that nucleosomes are organized into chromatin in archaea and eukaryotes suggest that chromatin might have been involved in gene regulation before its role in DNA packaging evolved.

Novel imaging experiments suggest that fruit flies modify their neural circuitry for walking at slow, medium and fast speeds, and that proprioception is not essential for coordinated walking.

Cauliflower mosaic virus reacts immediately when aphids feed on the host plant, and this boosts its chances of being taken up and transmitted by the insects to a new plant.

The nematode worm C. elegans consumes familiar bacterial species more rapidly than it does novel ones, and this preference for familiarity is mediated by a pair of serotonergic neurons.

An interaction between two proteins enables the spindle—the structure that segregates chromosome pairs during mitosis—to change size as cells divide.

The Notch signaling pathway has a central role in the development of the nervous system, and also in the establishment of networks of connections in the adult brain

A protein complex that enables cells to transport substances across their membranes, and that typically consists of four subunits, can also function as two hemicomplexes, each with two subunits.

By using different groups of cells to represent distinct environments and events, the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus helps to keep memories of similar events separate.

The details of how the enzyme DNA polymerase α initiates the polymerization of nucleotides in DNA replication, a critical step in the synthesis of new chromosomal DNA, have been revealed in atomic detail.