biology

Natural silk, as we all know, has a strength that manmade materials have long struggled to match. In a discovery that sounds more like an ancient Chinese proverb than a materials science breakthrough, MIT researchers have discovered that silk gets its strength from its weakness. Or, more specifically, its many weaknesses. Silk gets its extraordinary durability and ductility from an unusual arrangement of hydrogen bonds that are inherently very weak but that work together to create a strong, flexible structure.

Rainbow trout with six-pack abs and burly shoulders have emerged from a University of Rhode Island laboratory, and could someday find their way to humans' dinner tables. That's assuming diners don't panic at the sight of the muscular ichthyoid awaiting their knives and forks.

Despite the impact of mankind, the size of trees, and the sheer numbers of bugs, multicellular terrestrial life only makes up a small portion of the planet's biomass. The majority of life on Earth lives at the bottom of the ocean, much of it beneath the ocean floor.

Thanks to those extreme depths, science knows virtually nothing about the majority of the planet's lifeforms. But a series of deep sea drilling expeditions over the course of the next year looks to finally shine a light on our planet's richest, and most mysterious, habitats.

There’s not a whole lot to we can say to preface this photo except yes, it is real. The image of the tiny Asian weaver ant clinging upside-down to a smooth surface holding a 500 mg weight – that’s 100 times its body weight – captured first prize in the first Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) science photo competition, and with good cause; not only is it an amazing close-up of a tiny creature, but it captures some pretty amazing biology as well.

What would you do with $25 million? If you answered "create a center to research the development of programmable, highly sophisticated biological machines," we regret to inform you the National Science Foundation and MIT have beaten you to the punch. The Emergent Behaviors of Integrated Cellular Systems Center (EBICS), will not only advance research in the emerging experimental discipline of engineered biological systems, but will lay an extensive educational groundwork for research in the field going forward.

If pictures are worth a thousand words, then they must be worth at least a couple of hundred data points. Plenty of scientific concepts are better displayed with graphics than with texts, and every year the National Science Foundation and Science Magazine highlight the best science visualizations of the year.

The 2009 winners represent a diverse range of fields, from medicine to math to statistics. However, they all manage to distill highly technical scientific concepts into easily understandable pictures, films, and interactive creations.

Much like your four-year-old nephew, RNA can only read three-letter combinations. Called codons, these three DNA-base-pair groups form the phrases that RNA translates into the 21 amino acids that underlie all life. But now, University of Cambridge researcher Jason Chin has engineered more literate RNA, capable of reading codons composed of four base pairs. This expands the possible number of codons from 64 to 320, and opens the door for a whole new line of artificial amino acids.

The world is ending. Not right now, mind you, but we can rest assured that it will end. Whether from massive star explosions in nearby solar systems, a collision with another body in space or the death of our own sun, life on this planet -- all life -- at one point will cease to be. And according to Michael Mautner of Virginia Commonwealth University, we have a moral obligation to seed life throughout the universe before that happens.

A snail might not sounds like an ideal inspiration for a defense system, but one unique, deep-sea dwelling mollusk could serve as the model for a new kind of body armor, based on its ability to repel crab attacks.

For scientists studying the smallest components of life, microscopes have always had frustrating limitations. Electron scanning microscopes can see very small object, but not in real time through the dynamic movement of cells. Fluorescent dyes identify microscopic objects, but the brightness of the emitted light greatly reduces the resolution.

The Stochastic Optical Reconstruction Microscope (STORM) solves both those problems. 100 times more powerful than a regular optical microscope, the STORM filters and adjusts light emitted from fluorescent dyes to produce a clean image of individual molecules, and thus allowing researchers to watch the behavior of proteins in real time.

The journal Nature, ever the forward-looking publication, is finished with all of this best-of-the-last-decade nonsense. To celebrate the dawn of a new decade, the editors tapped experts across the scientific community, asking them simply "where will your field be ten years from now, and how will we get there?" Our favorite five predictions are collected below.

Scientists from the Scripps Research Institute have discovered that prions -- tiny infectious bits of protein that can cause deadly neurodegenerative disease -- are capable of evolution. While that might not seem groundbreaking, here's the thing: while prions evolve by Darwinian, naturally selective processes, they are completely devoid of DNA and RNA.

Research shows that being taller means a fatter pay check and an increased risk of some cancers.

To some, watching a butterfly emerge from its cocoon, transformed from larva to magnificent winged beauty, is proof of nature's great wonder. For two butterflies aboard the International Space Station, it was a wonder that they emerged at all. For the first time in history, two painted lady butterflies each survived the larvae stage, formed a chrysalis and emerged as mature butterflies.

This is what goes on behind the scenes whenever you open your mouth to speak.