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Tag: Publication

Study Reveals Octopus Mating Arm Doubles as a Chemical Sensor

A new study (PDF) from the MCB lab of Nicholas Bellono reveals an unexpected sensory mechanism underlying octopus reproduction—showing that a specialized arm used for mating is also…

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ROCKET Launches Structural Biology Past AlphaFold

Five years ago, a team at Google’s DeepMind won CASP14, the long-running protein structure prediction competition, with AlphaFold, a machine-learning system capable of predicting the three-dimensional structures of…

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Evolutionary Clues Reveal How a Key Hearing Protein Adapted for Function

A new study in Current Biology (PDF) sheds light on how a critical protein underlying hearing evolved to perform its specialized role in vertebrate sensory systems—offering a rare…

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Why Evolution Keeps Returning to the Same Solution for Smell

Why do animals as different as insects and mammals process smells in nearly the same way? A new theoretical study published in PNAS takes on this question by…

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Study Reveals Neural Circuit Behind the Brain’s Dopamine–Serotonin “Gas–Brake” System for Reward

A new study by Daniel Cardozo Pinto, now a Harvard Junior Fellow in MCB, has uncovered a neural circuit mechanism explaining how two key brain chemicals—dopamine and serotonin—work…

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Common Plant Proteins Found to Calm the Immune System

A new study co-led by MCB’s Kazuki Nagashima and published in Science Immunology (PDF) identifies plant-derived molecules that help quiet the immune system, preventing inflammatory reactions to the…

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Two PNAS Papers from the Samuel Lab Illuminate the Bacterial Flagellar Motor

Two new papers published in PNAS from the lab of Aravinthan Samuel shine fresh light on one of biology’s most iconic molecular machines: the bacterial flagellar motor. Although…

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The Secret to Schooling: How Internal States Shape Social Interactions during Schooling

A school of fish can look like a single, flowing organism—dozens of bodies turning and aligning in near-perfect synchrony. But that seamless choreography emerges from many individual animals…

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Smarter Microscopes, Faster Maps: Lichtman Lab’s “SmartEM” Brings AI to Connectomics

A new paper in Nature Methods (PDF) from the labs of MCB’s Jeff Lichtman and Aravinthan Samuel, of the department of physics and Center for Brain Science, introduces…

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Ancient Plants Used Infrared Radiation to Attract Their Pollinators

Long before flowers painted the planet in brilliant colors, some of Earth’s earliest plants were glowing—not with pigment, but with heat. A new study from the lab of…

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