Deep-sea hydrothermal vents: Undersea clues to the origin of life

The word “serendipity” is often used to describe an important discovery born out of random chance rather than deliberate action. Such “happy accidents” pepper the annals of scientific history, from Archimedes’ original “Eureka!” moment to Alexander Fleming’s discovery of antibiotics, to the invention of everyday items like Velcro, Teflon™, and…

“Spider-vision” study shows how arachnids can detect biological motion

Inside a dark laboratory, a little spider hangs in front of a computer screen. Rather than a silk line suspending it from above, a complex cylindrical apparatus seems to hold it in place. The spider’s feet touch a plastic ball covered with small dark patches. As images move across the…

Rewriting the Secret of Life: The Story of CRISPR

Earlier today, the The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm, Sweden, awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry to Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna “for the development of a method for genome editing”. CRISPR-Cas9, the technique that brought the duo the coveted prize, has raised excitement and controversy in almost equal measures…

‘Netting’ bacteria with DNA: strategies of a social amoeba

Life has survived for more than three billion years because it is robust, and almost no mutations can easily outwit the defense mechanisms built up through eons of exposure to potential pathogens. –Lawrence M. Krauss Every second, every minute of your life, your body is under attack. This may be…

Freud, Cocaine and the Dopamine Hypothesis of Addiction

Sigmund Freud, the venerable father of psychoanalysis, had a lesser known distinction up his sleeve. He produced one of the first comprehensive scientific analyses of the drug Cocaine, published in 1884 under the title ‘Über Coca’. In this remarkable manuscript, amidst sections such as a detailed description of the cocaine…