New research by a lab run by Dr Axel Brockmann at NCBS shows that in spite of differences in the behaviour of the dancer, the bees following this dance observe the dancer from identical vantage points and respond to the information with similar behaviours. 

It is early in the morning. Ebi and his colleagues try not to twitch as they stare intently at a rectangular box filled with sugary treats. These aren’t for them, but for the honey bees that they study. The tiny buzzers toggle between the sugar ‘feeder’ and the hive, which are a few metres apart. Interestingly, the bees that visit the feeder aren’t secretive about this new found food source. They graciously advertise its location to their nest mates and over time more bees are seen buzzing to the feeder. 

The National Centre for Biological Sciences is delighted to welcome Soumyashree Das, who joins the NCBS as its newest faculty member.

Soumya’s work is in basic cardiovascular research. She seeks to answer some of the outstanding questions in the field of coronary heart disease-a leading cause of adult mortality in India and worldwide.

“Our work is completely in vivo, which means we need our mice to do our experiments. All experiments have come to a sudden pause and work is greatly affected.

The findings by Shantanu Joshi and Krusnamegh Kunte from the National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bengaluru, KA Subramanian and R Babu from Zoological Survey of India (ZSI), Chennai, and Dattarprasad Sawant from KEM Hospital, Mumbai, were published in the international taxonomic journal Zootaxa on Wednesday.

In a new study, a team of scientists led by Dr. P.V. Shivaprasad has shown that a previously unknown AGO named AGO17 is essential for the growth of panicles that hold rice grains. When the researchers expressed it at higher levels in plants, they got plants with longer panicles and more yield. On the other hand, plants had poor growth if they removed this gene by knockdown strategies.

Plants destroy viral toxic proteins as part of their defence, while the viruses use the plant machinery to protect their toxic proteins and cause symptoms.

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