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Author(s): Joshua Finkelstein [1]; Alex Eccleston [1]; Sadaf Shadan [1] [illus. 1] Our understanding of how proteins fold into distinct shapes and catalyse a broad range of chemical transformations has [...]

The Nature Insight 'Frontiers in biology' aims to cover timely and important developments in biology, ranging from the subcellular to the organismal level, and including molecular mechanisms and biomedicine. The [...]

The Nature Insight 'Frontiers in Biology' aims to cover timely and important developments across biology, ranging from subcellular molecular mechanisms to whole-organism physiology, and biomedicine. The Insight begins with a [...]

If it's not relevant you may miss it. This phenomenon of inattentional blindness is well documented; in a classic study, most observers asked to monitor a video of a ball [...]

These days, it is hard to imagine having a surgical procedure without anaesthetics. Yet some 170 years after their first use in medicine, the way in which these drugs exert [...]

In a dance class, everyone follows the instructor. The opposite situation would be if everyone in the class performed without a designated leader--an activity known as joint improvisation. In a [...]

Advances in imaging in the past decade have revolutionized the field of cell biology. Developments such as super-resolution fluorescence microscopy and the ability to detect single molecules mean that molecular [...]

You can mainly blame--or thank--your genes for your height. But although an estimated 80% of the variability in height is thought to be down to genetic factors, pinpointing which genes [...]

Eat more, move less and lose weight--sounds too good to be true. Yet this is exactly what Julia Fischer and her colleagues observed in mice lacking one specific gene (J. [...]

Of the five basic tastes--bitter, sweet, umami, sour and salty--umami is the least well known and certainly the least romantic. Yet most of us have experienced this savoury flavour, and [...]

In the American sitcom Friends, Monica bakes mouth-watering cookies for her housemates, but--having been overweight as a teenager (pictured)--she is reluctant to eat them herself. Kirsty Spalding and colleagues now [...]

What Chinese roses lack in resistance to cold and disease, they make up for with repeated blooming and a distinctive fragrance. It isn't surprising, then, that plant breeders, fascinated with [...]

The statistics are grim. Schistosomiasis--a tropical disease caused by flatworms of the genus Schistosoma--kills 280,000 people annually. Moreover, 200 million people are infected with the worm, and a further 800 [...]

People who have Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome (HGPS), such as the two-year-old girl pictured, grow old before their time. This distressing condition of premature ageing is a rare but fatal genetic [...]