One and a half million: The estimated number of deaths caused by mosquito-borne diseases every year across the world. Prevention is fundamental to curbing these diseases, and doctors recommend the use of nets and vaccines, as well as repellants, which deter mosquitoes by interfering with their sense of smell. Scientists at the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) have now discovered 110 new proteins in three mosquito species - proteins belonging to a group critical to mosquito olfaction. Repellants targetting this larger group of proteins may function better than existing ones, decreasing instances of dreaded diseases such as dengue and malaria.

The international Human Science Frontier Program awarded a Young Investigator research grant to NCBS principal investigator Madhusudhan Venkadesan and his collaborators, Mahesh Bandi (Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University, Japan) and Shreyas Mandre (School of Engineering, Brown University, USA) last month. They received the three-year grant (of $350,000 per year), for a project titled "Foot in Motion: Materials, Mechanics and Control" which proposes to study how the human foot helps in stable, energy efficient locomotion.

With a melange of art, science and hacking, HackteriaLab 2013 is beginning today at NCBS. No, not the kind of computer hacking that comes first to our minds when we hear that word.

Alternative healing systems have always been part of Indian tradition: from local medicine men to the vaidyas or physicians of the more classical unani and ayurveda. The popularity of these remedies took a beating with the advent of allopathic medicine. But traditional medical systems are coming to the fore once again and enjoying renewed interest.

The fastest carnivorous plant: a small aquatic species belonging to the bladderwort genus now holds that distinction. Scientists at the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) filmed Utricularia stellaris trapping its prey and found that it was the fastest ever recorded for a carnivorous plant. The finding reaffirms that even organisms without muscle and nervous systems can evolve mechanisms that make them fast enough to outsmart prey with advanced sensorimotor capacities.

The Science Journalism Course is back at NCBS, now accepting applications for its 2012 batch. But what was it like to be part of the first course held in 2011? What are its alumni doing now? That's something this year's prospective participants will be curious to know.

The Royal Society elected NCBS director K. VijayRaghavan a Fellow of the Society on 19^th April 2012. Out of six scientists of Indian origin elected as Fellows this year, VijayRaghavan is the only one based in India.

Just as banks store away only the most valuable possessions in the most secure safes, cells could also be prioritising which genes to guard most closely. A study published yesterday in Nature shows that bacteria have evolved mechanisms that protect important genes from random mutation, effectively reducing the risk of self-destruction. The study answers a question that has been debated for half a century and could provide insights into how mutations that cause diseases including cancers, arise.

Scientists studying Alzheimer's, amyloidosis or similar diseases caused by malformed proteins won't have to sift through pages of literature anymore. Searching for information including the structures of proteins involved in diseases like these is now easy, thanks to 3DSwap, an online database developed by a team of researchers at NCBS. 3DSwap is a freely-accessible database of proteins recorded in diseases caused due to protein malformation.