News by Subject Biology

Rice University bioscientists develop a method to observe patterns of early embryonic development, during which ectodermal cells diverge toward their fates as skin, organs and the nervous system.

Different dinosaur groups independently evolved gigantic body sizes, but they all faced the same problems of overheating and damaging their brains.

Arapaima gigas is a big fish in a bigger river full of piranhas, but that doesn't mean it's an easy meal. It's evolved armor-like scales that deform, but don't tear or crack, when a piranha -- which has one of the animal kingdom's most powerful bites -- attacks. Researchers from UC San Diego and UC Berkeley describe the unique properties of the Amazonian Arapaima skin and its potential for man-made materials Oct. 16 in the journal Matter.

Desert ants are incredibly fast for their size, but now a team of researchers led by Harald Wolf from the University of Ulm, Germany, has discovered that Saharan silver ants are the world champions, hitting a record breaking top speed of 855mm/s (108 times their body length per second), twice as fast for their size as their larger cousins (Cataglyphis fortis, 50 body lengths/s) by swinging their legs at speeds of up to 1,300mm/s.

Rice University synthetic biologists design transcriptional circuits that allow single-cell microbes to form networks that spur collective action, even in large communities. The work could lead to engineered microbes that treat conditions in gut microbiomes or communicate with bioelectronics.

Mohan Edirisinghe leads a team at University College London studying the fabrication of polymeric nanofibers and microfibers -- very thin fibers made up of polymers. The fibers can be woven into textilelike structures but depending on the use, different fiber thicknesses may be necessary. To study the effects of various parameters on fiber fabrication, the researchers compared the characteristics of fibers created in different ways. The group describes the work in Applied Physics Reviews.