8 February 2023
Science
EMBL researchers are stepping outside the lab and thinking outside the box to understand the basic principles that underlie the development and evolution of organismal characteristics.
8 June 2022
Alumni
Two former EMBL staff members have been recognised for their outstanding contributions to research in the fields of brain evolution and cancer.
5 November 2021
Science
What can sponges tell us about the evolution of the brain? Sponges have the genes involved in neuronal function in higher animals. But if sponges don’t have brains, what is the role of these? EMBL scientists imaged the sponge digestive chamber to find out.
19 February 2021
Lab Matters
Gautam Dey is fascinated by the evolutionary origins of the nucleus, and is looking forward to making the most of EMBL's infrastructure.
14 October 2020
Science
Researchers from EMBL Heidelberg have established an automated pipeline to create mutations in genomic enhancers, letting them watch evolution unfold before their eyes.
29 November 2019
Science
Exploring the diverse routes by which EMBL scientists are driving forward neurobiology
31 October 2018
Science
EMBL researchers discover that four organs in a marine worm’s head can sense different chemicals
9 May 2018
Lab Matters
EMBL alumna, Èlia Benito-Gutiérrez, on how her research and career evolved after searching the seas
21 February 2018
Science
EMBL scientists discover how a molecule’s role changes from simple metabolite to instructive signal
12 February 2018
Science
How Darwin’s work revealed the intimate relationship between orchids and insects
11 August 2017
Science
Meet Justin Crocker, EMBL’s new group leader in gene regulation during evolution and development
9 June 2017
Science
EMBL researchers complete a molecular atlas showing gene expression in all cells in an entire animal
13 March 2017
Science
ERC grantee Detlev Arendt shares his vision for the next ten years
14 October 2016
Science
A rapid, versatile mechanism that modifies proteins is revealed to be crucial for the evolutionary process
11 December 2015
Science
Making it easier to visualise, understand and predict how proteins combine to drive biological processes.
9 December 2015
Events
Two PhD students sink their teeth into the science and speculations of Jurassic Park.
25 November 2015
Science
From jumping genes to organ transplants, the non-human features that make us human.
25 November 2015
Events
What really sets humans apart? Forming societies, teaching and compassion, says Agustin Fuentes.
25 November 2015
Events
Highlights from the 'What makes us human?' symposium at EMBL Heidelberg.
1 October 2015
Science
From the role of diatoms to how life evolved - scientists' pressing questions about life in the sea.
28 September 2015
Events
Insights from organisers of upcoming EMBO|EMBL Aquatic Microeukaryotes symposium.
24 August 2015
Events
A contagious cancer threatens the Tasmanian devil – extract from Science in School journal.
21 May 2015
Science
Tara Oceans results reveal climate change insights, and a treasure trove of novel species and genes.
18 May 2015
Science
New research shows that some proteins domains can function even with big parts missing.
14 April 2015
Science
New single-cell genomics techniques bring ‘omics to evolution and development research.
23 January 2015
Lab Matters
PhD student Silvia Rohr on studying eyes – and talking about it for a general audience.
18 December 2014
Science
How do E.coli and similar bacteria grow safely? By using barrel-plugs as sensors.
17 October 2014
Science
From anemones to starfish, sea creatures are helping understand development, evolution and more.
25 September 2014
Science
How plankton gets jet lagged: the same hormone governs our sleep patterns and a daily marine migration.
12 September 2014
Science
Evolutionary surprise: notochord likely evolved from muscle, earlier than assumed.
29 August 2014
Science
Bronwen Aken discusses what research into the rabbit genome reveals about animal domestication.
20 July 2014
Science
Marmoset genome provides insights into chimerism: data available in Ensembl genome explorer
2 July 2014
Science
Surprising finding: enhancers find their targets long before activation in Drosophila embryos
1 July 2014
Science
Surprising protein from a flu-like virus is 10 000th ESRF structure
31 October 2012
Science
In a nutshell: 1st map combining human genetic variation at different scales – from single letters to large chunks Based on genomes of 1092 healthy people from Europe, the Americas and East Asia Could help identify genetic causes of disease, rather than just links Data made freely available in…
12 January 2012
Science
A team of geneticists and computational biologists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory’s European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and Cancer Research UK reveal how an ancient mechanism is involved in gene control and continues to drive genome…
2 September 2010
Science
Our cerebral cortex, or pallium, is a big part of what makes us human: art, literature and science would not exist had this most fascinating part of our brain not emerged in some less intelligent ancestor in prehistoric times. But when did this occur and what were these ancestors? Unexpectedly,…
31 January 2010
Science
The last ancestor we shared with worms, which roamed the seas around 600 million years ago, may already have had a sophisticated brain that released hormones into the blood and was connected to various sensory organs. The evidence comes not from a newly found fossil but from the study of microRNAs…
19 January 2010
Science
Although they are present almost everywhere, on land and sea, a group of related bacteria in the superphylum Planctomycetes-Verrucomicrobia-Chlamydiae, or PVC, have remained in relative obscurity ever since they were first described about a decade ago. Scientists at the European Molecular Biology…
20 November 2008
Science
The best-selling novel The swarm captured the imagination of countless readers with the fascination of marine life. But it also showed how little we understand life in the depth of the ocean. Scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) and the Max Planck Institute (MPI)…
9 July 2008
Science
Genetic recombination, the process by which sexually reproducing organisms shuffle their genetic material when producing germ cells, leads to offspring with a new genetic make-up and influences the course of evolution. In the current issue of Nature, researchers at the European Molecular…
20 June 2008
Science
What makes a human different from a chimp? Researchers from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory’s European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) have come one important step closer to answering such evolutionary questions correctly. In the current issue of Science they uncover…
30 May 2008
Science
Researchers from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, and the EMBL-European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) in Hinxton, UK, have revealed new insights into how sex chromosomes are regulated. A chromatin modifying enzyme helps compensate for the fact that…
7 May 2008
Science
UK-based researchers at the Medical Research Council Functional Genomics Unit in Oxford and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory’s European Bioinformatics Institute in Cambridge have revealed the genetic makeup of the one of the world’s strangest mammals. They have analysed the DNA…
29 June 2007
Science
Hormones control growth, metabolism, reproduction and many other important biological processes. In humans, and all other vertebrates, the chemical signals are produced by specialised brain centres such as the hypothalamus and secreted into the blood stream that distributes them around the body.…
20 April 2007
Science
The rise of the central nervous system (CNS) in animal evolution has puzzled scientists for centuries. Vertebrates, insects and worms evolved from the same ancestor, but their CNSs are different and were thought to have evolved only after their lineages had split during evolution. Researchers from…
2 February 2007
Science
Microorganisms make up more than a third of the Earth’s biomass. They are found in water, on land and even in our bodies, recycling nutrients, influencing the planet’s climate or causing diseases. Still, we know surprisingly little about the smallest beings that colonise Earth. A new…
27 September 2006
Science
The life of a cell is all about growing and dividing at the right time. That is why the cell cycle is one of the most tightly regulated cellular processes. A control system with several layers adjusts when key components of the cell cycle machinery are produced, activated and degraded to make sure…
16 March 2006
Science
Recent research at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) reveals new insights into how cells achieve equality between the sexes. A new link discovered between the membrane surrounding the nucleus and the male X-chromosome in fruit flies may play a crucial role in determining how active…
2 March 2006
Science
In 1870 the German scientist Ernst Haeckel mapped the evolutionary relationships of plants and animals in the first ‘tree of life’. Since then scientists have continuously redrawn and expanded the tree adding microorganisms and using modern molecular data, yet, many parts of the tree…
24 November 2005
Science
Species evolve at very different rates, and the evolutionary line that produced humans seems to be among the slowest. The result, according to a new study by scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory [EMBL], is that our species has retained characteristics of a very ancient ancestor…
25 August 2005
Science
Achieving equality between the sexes can be a challenge even for single cells. Since evolution began removing bits of male DNA to create the ‘Y’ chromosome, males have had a single copy of certain key genes on the X chromosome, whereas females have two. Normally this would lead females…
1 July 2005
Science
EBI researchers have changed our view of 4 billion years of microbial evolution. Christos Ouzounis and colleagues have gained intriguing quantitative insights into how gene families are transferred, not only ‘vertically’ through passage from one organism to its progeny, but also…
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