worm

This post contributed by Nadine Lymn, ESA Director of Public Affairs The roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) is a tiny laboratory animal that researchers have worked with for decades.  As a hermaphrodite, C. elegans makes both sperm and eggs and can reproduce by self-fertilization.  In contrast to humans, where hermaphrodites are rare, for C. elegans, this is its normal state.  …

This post contributed by Liza Lester, ESA communications officer   No one speaks for the endangered poliomyelitis. No one raises money to protect the last survivors, as health workers stalk the virus through its last redoubts in India, Pakistan, Nigeria and Afghanistan. On the contrary, the WHO spends billions on hunting it to extinction. But the virus has held out…

The last time humans and the marine ragworm Platynereis dumerilii shared a common ancestor was roughly 600 million years ago, according to scientists from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany (EMBL). That is, researcher have discovered a true counterpart of the cerebral cortex, also called the pallium, in this relative of the earthworm. This finding, explained the scientists, could be the key to unraveling the evolution of this important area of the human (and all vertebrates) brain.