Exploring humanity’s shared history through paleogenetics
Svante Pääbo, Nobel laureate and 2026 EMBL Kafatos Lecturer, discusses what his research reveals about the origins of humankind.
PEOPLE & PERSPECTIVES2026
people-perspectives
Sea creatures reveal the physics behind animal body shape diversity
New study identifies ‘mechanotypes’ as the physical links between genes and body shapes, explaining and predicting how diverse forms arise in animals like corals and sea anemones.
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY2026
science-technology
SPRTA: a smarter way to measure evolution uncertainty
A new method from EMBL-EBI and collaborators offers fast, easy-to-interpret confidence scores for phylogenetic trees for pandemic preparedness.
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY2025
science-technologytechnology-and-innovation
Scientists map yerba mate genome
Yerba mate is a popular caffeinated beverage. Scientists mapped its genome, revealing surprising facts about its biochemistry and the evolution of caffeine biosynthesis. The findings might pave the way for new varieties of yerba mate.
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY2025
science-technology
A marine worm offers clues about our evolutionary past
The Arendt Group at EMBL Heidelberg focuses on mechanisms of evolution, studying Platynereis dumerilli – evolutionarily ancient marine worms found broadly along European coasts.
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY2025
science-technology
We are EMBL: Jana Helsen on the Bridging Excellence fellowship, chromosomal evolution, and art
EMBL-Stanford Life Science Alliance fellow Jana Helsen shares how she balanced her life between two laboratories and countries, her latest research paper, and her passion for cover art.
PEOPLE & PERSPECTIVES2024
people-perspectives
Exploring diversity in cell division
New research by EMBL scientists shows how different modes of cell division used by animals and fungi might have evolved to support diverse life cycles.
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY2024
science-technology
2024 EMBL Alumni Award recipients announced
Two former EMBL scientists have been recognised for their outstanding contributions to research and leadership capabilities in the fields of evolutionary cell biology and molecular medicine.
EMBL ANNOUNCEMENTS2024
alumniembl-announcements
Ancient ‘relaxant-inflammatory’ response gets sponges moving
Sponges lack muscles and neurons. Yet, they make coordinated movements. Scientists at EMBL Heidelberg have discovered that sponge movement is controlled by an ancient ‘relaxant-inflammatory’ response that is also present in vertebrate blood vessels. The findings shed light on sponge physiology…
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY2024
sciencescience-technology
Genes, cells, and embryos in development and evolution: Pere Alberch, 25 years on
Scientists from the MELIS department at UPF and EMBL Barcelona have organised a symposium to discuss the work of the visionary Catalan scientist Pere Alberch, who passed away 25 years ago.
CONNECTIONS2023
connectionsevents
New evolutionary insights from stepping outside the lab
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.
2023
science
2022 EMBL Alumni Awards Winners announced
Two former EMBL staff members have been recognised for their outstanding contributions to research in the fields of brain evolution and cancer.
EMBL ANNOUNCEMENTS2022
alumniembl-announcements
More than a gut reaction
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.
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY2021
sciencescience-technology
Welcome to EMBL: Gautam Dey
Gautam Dey is fascinated by the evolutionary origins of the nucleus, and is looking forward to making the most of EMBL's infrastructure.
LAB MATTERSPEOPLE & PERSPECTIVES2021
lab-matterspeople-perspectives
Seeing evolution happening before your eyes
Researchers from EMBL Heidelberg have established an automated pipeline to create mutations in genomic enhancers, letting them watch evolution unfold before their eyes.
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY2020
sciencescience-technology
Neural pathways
Exploring the diverse routes by which EMBL scientists are driving forward neurobiology
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY2019
sciencescience-technology
A worm’s sense of the world
EMBL researchers discover that four organs in a marine worm’s head can sense different chemicals
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY2018
sciencescience-technology
Ocean origins
EMBL alumna, Èlia Benito-Gutiérrez, on how her research and career evolved after searching the seas
LAB MATTERSPEOPLE & PERSPECTIVES2018
lab-matterspeople-perspectives
Insights into the evolution of a signalling molecule
EMBL scientists discover how a molecule’s role changes from simple metabolite to instructive signal
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY2018
sciencescience-technology
On the orchids of Darwin
How Darwin’s work revealed the intimate relationship between orchids and insects
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY2018
sciencescience-technology
Welcome: Justin Crocker
Meet Justin Crocker, EMBL’s new group leader in gene regulation during evolution and development
PEOPLE & PERSPECTIVES2017
people-perspectivesscience
Mapping gene expression, cell by cell
EMBL researchers complete a molecular atlas showing gene expression in all cells in an entire animal
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY2017
sciencescience-technology
Futures: Brain evolution
ERC grantee Detlev Arendt shares his vision for the next ten years
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY2017
sciencescience-technology
Drivers of evolution hidden in plain sight
A rapid, versatile mechanism that modifies proteins is revealed to be crucial for the evolutionary process
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY2016
sciencescience-technology
Periodic table of protein complexes
Making it easier to visualise, understand and predict how proteins combine to drive biological processes.
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY2015
sciencescience-technology
Dinosaurs, DNA and Dolly
Two PhD students sink their teeth into the science and speculations of Jurassic Park.
LAB MATTERS2015
eventslab-matters
What makes us human? Or not…
From jumping genes to organ transplants, the non-human features that make us human.
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY2015
sciencescience-technology
Branches: What makes humans tick?
What really sets humans apart? Forming societies, teaching and compassion, says Agustin Fuentes.
PEOPLE & PERSPECTIVESSCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY2015
people-perspectivesscience-technology
Being human beings
Highlights from the 'What makes us human?' symposium at EMBL Heidelberg.
PEOPLE & PERSPECTIVES2015
eventspeople-perspectives
Marine mysteries
From the role of diatoms to how life evolved - scientists' pressing questions about life in the sea.
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY2015
sciencescience-technology
Symposium sails sea of knowledge
Insights from organisers of upcoming EMBO|EMBL Aquatic Microeukaryotes symposium.
CONNECTIONS2015
connectionsevents
Branches: Sympathy for the devil
A contagious cancer threatens the Tasmanian devil – extract from Science in School journal.
LAB MATTERS2015
eventslab-matters
Oceans endeavour charts 40 million genes
Tara Oceans results reveal climate change insights, and a treasure trove of novel species and genes.
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY2015
sciencescience-technology
Are protein domains indivisible?
New research shows that some proteins domains can function even with big parts missing.
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY2015
sciencescience-technology
Towards an expression atlas for an entire brain
New single-cell genomics techniques bring ‘omics to evolution and development research.
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY2015
sciencescience-technology
Let there be light
PhD student Silvia Rohr on studying eyes – and talking about it for a general audience.
LAB MATTERS2015
lab-matters
Bacteria’s barrel-building challenge
How do E.coli and similar bacteria grow safely? By using barrel-plugs as sensors.
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY2014
sciencescience-technology
Superstars of science
From anemones to starfish, sea creatures are helping understand development, evolution and more.
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY2014
sciencescience-technology
How plankton gets jet lagged
How plankton gets jet lagged: the same hormone governs our sleep patterns and a daily marine migration.
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY2014
sciencescience-technology
From worm muscle to spinal discs
Evolutionary surprise: notochord likely evolved from muscle, earlier than assumed.
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY2014
sciencescience-technology
How do animals become domesticated?
Bronwen Aken discusses what research into the rabbit genome reveals about animal domestication.
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY2014
sciencescience-technology
Shedding light on chimeral twins
Marmoset genome provides insights into chimerism: data available in Ensembl genome explorer
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY2014
sciencescience-technology
Surprisingly stable long-distance relationships
Surprising finding: enhancers find their targets long before activation in Drosophila embryos
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY2014
sciencescience-technology
The future’s bright
Surprising protein from a flu-like virus is 10 000th ESRF structure
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY2014
sciencescience-technology
Spot the difference
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…
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY2012
sciencescience-technology
Evolution by ‘copy-paste’
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…
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY2012
sciencescience-technology
Brainy worms: Evolution of the cerebral cortex
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,…
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY2010
sciencescience-technology
MicroRNA: a glimpse into the past
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…
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY2010
sciencescience-technology
Membrane-coat proteins: bacteria have them too
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…
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY2010
sciencescience-technology
Uncovering secrets of life in the ocean
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)…
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY2008
sciencescience-technology
Zooming in on genetic shuffling
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…
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY2008
sciencescience-technology
Scientists fix bugs in our understanding of evolution
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…
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY2008
sciencescience-technology
X chromosome exposed
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…
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY2008
sciencescience-technology
Platypus genome sequence published
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…
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY2008
sciencescience-technology
Modern brains have an ancient core
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.…
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY2007
sciencescience-technology
The origin of the brain lies in a worm
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…
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY2007
sciencescience-technology
Investigating the invisible life in our environment
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…
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY2007
sciencescience-technology
How nature tinkers with the cellular clock
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…
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY2006
sciencescience-technology
A balancing act between the sexes
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…
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY2006
sciencescience-technology
A new tree of life allows a closer look at the origin of species
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…
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY2006
sciencescience-technology
The earliest animals had human-like genes
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…
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY2005
sciencescience-technology
A double punch for female survival
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…
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY2005
sciencescience-technology
Trees, vines and nets: microbial evolution changes its face
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…
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY2005
sciencescience-technology
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