Sometimes, groundbreaking discoveries begin with what looks like a failed experiment. Researchers in the lab of MCB Professor Nicholas Bellono have discovered that octopuses possess a unique structural…
Tag: Publication
How Experience Shapes the Social Brain—One Tiny Fish at a Time
Why do animals respond differently to the same social situation? According to new research from the MCB lab of Florian Engert, the answer may depend as much on…
New CRISPR Method Reveals Genes That Shape the Developing Brain
Understanding how a single genetic mutation can alter the shape of a developing organ has long posed a challenge for developmental biologists. While researchers can readily study the…
Two Decades in the Making: New Study Reveals How Brain Function Shapes Its Own Structure
After nearly 20 years of meticulous research, a team of Harvard scientists has published findings in Nature Neuroscience (PDF) that fundamentally challenge how we think about brain development.…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
