At the beginning of the XXI Century, Spanish Biology lives a period of unprecedented growth and development. This situation owes much to the stability of the last few years and breaks a pattern in which Science was the activity of a few self-taught individuals working within an indifferent environment. The development of Genetics is a good example of these factors. A long isolated period dating back to the 1500s was broken at the beginning of the XX Century through the creation of a number of institutions and, in particular the Junta de Ampliacion de Estudios, which created a seed for scientific development and had a significant effect in the area of Genetics. However, the Spanish civil war destroyed this seed and forced a new beginning. Throughout the second half of the century, steady progress, largely driven by individuals formed abroad and returning to Spain with knowledge and methods, has been the basis for the establishment of a scientific ingrastructure from which Spain is making important contributions to modern biology. The person of Antonio Garcia-Bellido has emerged over the last 40 years as a reference for modern genetics and also as the root of an important, perhaps the only, real school in this area of work.

Gene expression programs underlying memory are not well understood in Drosophila. Here, authors use mushroom body-specific RNA sequencing to characterize the transcriptional trace of long-term memory ...

Face aux contestations de la science dans les salles de classe, les enseignants sont souvent démunis. Le biologiste Guillaume Lecointre leur propose un manuel pratique d’une grande clarté.

Podonominae, a group of non-biting midges within the Chironomidae family, serves as an important biogeographical model. For a long time, it was believ…

To understand Adolf Hitler, we need to look at his personal life and the wider societal and historical context - analysing his DNA for a TV gimmick tells us nothing, says Michael Le Page

Abstract. The sperm whale communication system, consisting of groups of clicks called codas, has been primarily analyzed in terms of the number of clicks and their inter-click timing. This paper repor...

El mundo de hoy no es el futuro de coches voladores y robots sirvientes que se imaginaba en el siglo pasado, y la visión actual de lo que el progreso debe traernos ha cambiado. Lo que esperamos de la ciencia para las próximas décadas es que encuentren soluciones contra el cambio climático y otras amenazas que ponen en riesgo nuestra supervivencia y la del planeta.

In a Harvard talk, his biographer digs into the novelist’s "true loves" and recurring themes — from lust to Jewish life.

Soft batteries and water-walking robots are among the many creations made possible by studying animals and plants.

Convective erosion and lateral transport of metasomatized continental keels may generate enriched mantle geochemical domains sampled by oceanic volcanism, according to a geodynamic modelling study.

“Genuinely Hard Problems” pilots novel approach to scientific education.

Parfois, la lassitude étreint l’éditorialiste. Notre métier serait-il de hurler dans le désert ? De pédaler dans une roue qui n’en finit...

A vast study suggests that being multilingual can slow down cognitive ageing.

Changing minds epigenetically: Germline genes in neurons disrupt animal behavior

The buried ocean on Saturn’s moon Enceladus seems to be stable across extremely long periods of time, making it an even more promising place to hunt for life

El biólogo, fallecido a los 89 años, deja un legado científico que roza las alturas de los nobeles Santiago Ramón y Cajal y Severo Ochoa

Définitivement placé sous le signe de la religion, le second mandat du président américain est marqué par le rôle croissant de l’agence, mise en place pour renforcer la place dominante du christianism...

Colauréat du Nobel 1962 pour une découverte qui a donné le coup d’envoi de la révolution génétique, l’Américain avait terni son image en minimisant le travail de la cristallographe Rosalind Franklin e...

Host-parasite arms races facilitate rapid evolution and can fuel speciation. Cuculus cuckoos are deceptive egg mimics that exhibit a broad diversity of counterfeit egg phenotypes, representing host-ad...

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...