Researchers at University College London report in an eLife study that activity from the visual cortex of mice can be used to reconstruct short movies the animals had watched. The work turns patterns of neural activity into moving images, giving scientists a new way to study how the brain represents the visual world. The team…
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Researchers at Nagoya University have identified an unexpected self-modifying behavior in a brain-related enzyme, according to a study in the Journal of Biological Chemistry. The enzyme, called ST8Sia5L, can build a long sugar chain on itself. That chain then helps control whether the enzyme stays quiet, leaves the cell and later becomes active again. The…
A study in the Zoological Journal has revealed that citizen-science observations helped more than double the known evidence for parental care in harvestmen, a diverse group of arachnids known for unusually devoted egg guarding. Led by Glauco Machado of the University of São Paulo, the research used iNaturalist records alongside nearly three decades of field…
A study in Research proposes a sweeping answer to one of biology’s oldest mysteries. Yongdong Jin of Shenzhen University argues that tiny mineral particles with enzyme-like abilities may have helped early Earth turn simple gases and inorganic chemistry into the first life-related molecules. The idea is called the nanozymes hypothesis. It places natural mineral nanozymes…
