100 years biochemical sciences tutorial
Behaviors such as mating, territorial defense, parenting or predator avoidance, despite being instinctive, are modulated by social experience. Because instinctive behaviors can be elicited without any previous social…
Sensory systems must be adaptive to allow animals to cope with changing environments. For hundreds of years, neuroscientists thought that neural plasticity came from changes in the connections…
The phrase “finding a needle in a haystack” refers to the difficulty of locating a specific target among a large number of very similar objects. Living cells face…
The discovery of RNA interference (RNAi) in 1998 was one of the most unexpected findings in the last 30 years. The Nobel-winning observations were made in C. elegans,…
RNA interference (RNAi) is a nearly ubiquitous gene silencing phenomenon triggered by introduced double-stranded RNA (dsRNA). In some animals, including the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, RNAi is systemic, which…
Many organisms on earth have evolved an endogenous self-sustained pacemaker, called the circadian clock, to anticipate daily changes in the environment and adapt its physiology. The circadian clock…
The dendritic arbors of neurons are incredibly diverse in size and shape. This makes sense, because dendritic morphology is a critical determinant of the numbers and types of…
All cells need to sense and respond to different stresses in their local environment in order to survive and grow, and bacteria are certainly no exception. The model…
Diverse cellular and developmental processes are controlled by reversible phosphorylation – the process by which phosphates are added or removed from proteins. Reversible protein phosphorylation is widely used…
Understanding brain function generally requires a deep engagement with the matter at least at two separate levels. These are the level of behavioral algorithms on the one hand…
