100 years biochemical sciences tutorial

Department News News Archive

News archive

Tag: Publication

Mapping the Sense of Smell, Molecule by Molecule

A new study from the lab of Catherine Dulac, the Xander University Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard, in collaboration with Xiawei Zhuang of Harvard’s Departments…

Read more

Small Model, Big Insight: RNA Structure Rules Emerge from Minimal Data

MCB Senior Research Fellow Elena Rivas and colleagues have demonstrated that the fundamental rules governing RNA structure can be learned using a remarkably simple computational model—challenging assumptions that…

Read more

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…

Read more

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…

Read more

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…

Read more

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…

Read more

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…

Read more

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…

Read more

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…

Read more

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…

Read more