While India focuses on the habitat losses of large mammals, some smaller wildlife may be slipping through the cracks in protection programmes. A new study has found that only a minuscule percentage of the habitat of four species of small and rare wild cats are protected.

Read about the global survey on the loss of sense of smell and taste in people with COVID-19. Dr. Shannon Olsson is part of the consortium studying this. 

A lab at the city-based NCBS has discovered iron-sensing RNAs called Sensei.

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. 

“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.

CSIR Announces Awardees of Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for 2020

In the area of Biological Sciences, the coveted award has been bagged by Subhadeep Chatterjee from the Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics, Hyderabad and Vatsala Thirumalai from the National Centre for Biological Sciences.

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