Biology

News articles classified as Biology

The role of ribosomes in age-related diseases

Research finds that the cellular assembly line that produces proteins can stall with age, triggering a snowball effect that increases the output of misfolded proteins. In humans, clumps of misfolded proteins contribute to age-linked Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases.

Campus trees depict evolutionary concepts

More than a century of attentive groundskeeping has turned the Stanford campus into a museum of mathematical phylogenetics, says Noah Rosenberg, creator of the Stanford X-Tree Project.

Bird-like robot perches and grasps

With feet and legs like a peregrine falcon, engineers have created a robot that can perch and carry objects like a bird.

How cells avoid molecular assembly line mistakes

Stanford researchers use one of the most sophisticated structural biology techniques available to investigate how molecular assembly lines maintain their precise control while shepherding growing molecules through a complex, multi-step construction process.

New model points to solution to global blood shortage

A mathematical model of the body’s interacting physiological and biochemical processes shows that it may be more effective to replace red blood cell transfusion with transfusion of other fluids that are far less in demand.

Extinction changes rules of body size evolution

A sweeping analysis of marine fossils from most of the past half-billion years shows the usual rules of body size evolution change during mass extinctions and their recoveries. The discovery is an early step toward predicting how evolution will play out on the other side of the current extinction crisis.

Stanford Today —

Three faculty are announced as HHMI investigators

Three researchers join 21 other Stanford faculty as Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigators. The seven-year term frees faculty to pursue the most innovative biomedical research.

Modeling the role of influencers in shaping fads

A new study offers up a more realistic modeling of the rise and fall of fads as culture evolves and is transmitted to new generations, including an examination of the role “influencers” play in shaping what’s popular.