Biologists zero in on role of plasticity in evolution

For more than a century, scientists have suggested that the best way to settle the debate about how phenotypic plasticity—the way an organism changes in response to environment—may be connected to evolution would be to ...

Protein love triangle key to crowning bees queens?

A honey bee becomes a royal queen or a common worker as a result of the food she receives as a larva. While it has been well established that royal jelly is the diet that makes bees queens, the molecular path from food to ...

Dynamics of crucial protein 'switch' revealed

Researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston and the University of California-San Diego School of Medicine have published a study that offers a new understanding of a protein critical to physiological ...

Insulin signaling key to caste development in bees

What makes a bee grow up to be a queen? Scientists have long pondered this mystery. Now, researchers in the School of Life Sciences at Arizona State University have fit a new piece into the puzzle of bee development. Their ...

High-fat diets plus extra protein make for bad mix

It's basically a given that diets loaded with fat can lead to considerable health problems. But a new study in the April issue of Cell Metabolism, a Cell Press publication, shows that in some cases diets that are high in ...