chronobiology – Quanta Magazine

Across a Continent, Trees Sync Their Fruiting to the Sun

Meghan Willcoxon — Tue, 18 Jun 2024 13:50:35 +0000

Each summer, like clockwork, millions of beech trees throughout Europe sync up, tuning their reproductive physiology to one another. Within a matter of days, the trees produce all the seeds they’ll make for the year, then release their fruit onto the forest floor to create a new generation and feed the surrounding ecosystem. It’s a reproductive spectacle known as masting that’s common to many tree...

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The Year in Biology

Hannah Waters — Tue, 19 Dec 2023 19:13:40 +0000

Revolutions in the biological sciences can take many forms. Sometimes they erupt from the use of a novel tool or the invention of a radical theory that suddenly opens so many new avenues for research, it can feel dizzying. Sometimes they take shape slowly, through the slow accumulation of studies, each one representing years of painstaking work, that collectively chip away at the prevailing wisdom...

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How This Marine Worm Can Tell Moonglow From Sunbeams

Elise Cutts — Tue, 19 Dec 2023 14:57:31 +0000

On a summer night in the Bay of Naples, hordes of worms swam upward from the seagrass toward the water’s surface under the light of a waning moon. Not long before, the creatures began a gruesome sexual metamorphosis: Their digestive systems withered, and their swimming muscles grew, while their bodies filled with eggs or sperm. The finger-length creatures, now little more than muscular bags of sex...

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In Our Cellular Clocks, She’s Found a Lifetime of Discoveries

Veronique Greenwood — Tue, 10 Oct 2023 14:47:40 +0000

This morning, when the sun came up, billions of humans opened their eyes and admitted into their bodies a shaft of light from space. When the stream of photons struck the retina, neurons fired. And in every organ, in nearly every cell, elaborate machinery stirred. Each cell’s circadian clock, a complex of proteins whose levels rise and fall with the sun, clicked into gear.

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Epigenetic ‘Clocks’ Predict Animals’ True Biological Age

Ingrid Wickelgren — Wed, 17 Aug 2022 14:06:38 +0000

This time a year ago, Steve Horvath was looking for pangolin DNA. The ancient scaly anteater would be a first for his collection, which was then about 200 mammals strong. “I didn’t have any of that order, which is why I desperately wanted them,” he recalled. Since the summer of 2017, Horvath, who until recently was an anti-aging researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles...

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