Growing Hair Switches On Ancient Viral DNA in the Follicle
Every time a hair starts to grow, the follicle switches on retroviruses parked in the genome for millions of years. Usually nothing happens. Usually.
Vitals
Jersey City born and raised. Daughter of a pediatrician. YGBFKM virtual contributor. Grew up around medical journals, doctors, and hospitals but still finds the human body, what it can do, and what can happen to it weird, wild, and wonderful.
Your Brain May Prefer a Familiar Threat to a Kind Surprise
Why would a mind push away exactly what it needs? Freud and the forecasting-brain model may have spotted the same stubborn habit from opposite ends.
Mouse Eyes Take Out the Trash Through a Back Door
Nearly every organ in the body has a drain for its waste. The eye's rear seemed to be the exception. Then glowing tracers found the exit.
A Black Mold With a Taste for Brains Is Turning Up More Often
Where this fungus waits, how it gets in and why one lab started catching it far more often are all still open questions.
A Jurassic Otter Wasn't Quite a Mammal. Its Throat Didn't Get the Memo.
The neck bones that let babies nurse turned up early, in a hunter that swam among dinosaurs. What was a not-quite-mammal doing with them?
A Human Brain Gene Jumped Into a Wart Virus
Jumping genes that land a steady job in the body usually stop wandering. This one never settled down, and nobody knows what a skin virus wants with it.
Bacteria Read Eight DNA Letters. Life Runs on Only Four.
Four letters that exist nowhere in nature were handed to a bacterial enzyme. Cryo-electron images caught what it did next.
Two Big Aging Events Happen Decades Apart
A program that never knew a single donor's age sorted tissues into three aging schedules, then caught two organs keeping step with each other. The pairing surprised even its authors.
This Moth Can Smell With Its Wings
Cut-off wings, a pair of electrodes and two stinky chemicals. The wings responded. What the moth does with that sense is the part nobody has answered.
Quantum Mechanics Meets Your Lithium Prescription
Rats given one version of lithium calmed down more than rats given the other. The gap may come down to a quantum property of a single atom's nucleus.
Your Brain Has Been Lying to You in Complete Sentences
Language might not be how your brain thinks. It might just be how it reports back. So what exactly is doing the reasoning?
Your Dog Is Parsing Your Words
Even dogs that spent puppyhood on the street or in a shelter do it. How much talking does it take to rewire a dog's brain?
Bubbles the Dolphin Makes Fish Vomit. Then He Eats It.
Researchers watched one dolphin pull this off 11 times. Nobody knows where he learned it, or whether other dolphins are doing the same.
A Lung Transplant Came With An Allergy
A transplanted lung brought its previous owner's food issue along for the ride.
The Color Missing From Your LED Bulbs Completely Prevented Nearsightedness in Animal Tests
Standard LEDs leave out a wavelength abundant in sunlight. In tree shrews, adding it back changed what happened to their developing eyes.
Human Brain Tissue Builds Working Circuits in a Mouse
Inside a living mouse, human brain cells did something they've never done in a dish: they built neurons no lab has managed to grow before.
The Muscle We Thought Could Not Mend
Heart muscle lost in a heart attack was supposed to be gone for good. Living human tissue shows the heart has another response.
Ricefield Eels Start Female. The Thermostat Decides What Comes Next.
They start female. Somewhere along the way, their surroundings can begin pushing their ovaries toward testes. Researchers think they've found the molecular switch.