A collaborative research effort at the Weizmann Institute of Science has revealed that deadly malaria parasites’ are a pre-invasion strategy for softening up red blood cells. Red blood cells are the body's lifeline, but they also serve as the perfect hosts for one of...
Around 2.5 billion years ago, our planet experienced what was possibly the greatest change in its history: According to the geological record, molecular oxygen suddenly went from non-existent to becoming freely available everywhere. Evidence for the ‘great oxygenation...
Following on from the memorandum of understanding signed by the Weizmann Institute of Science and the UAE’s Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI) in September 2020, the two institutions have announced the establishment of the WIS-MBZUAI...
Multiple myeloma patients live much longer today than in the past, thanks to new targeted anti-myeloma drugs, but ultimately most develop resistance to the medications, and in some the disease is resistant to therapy from the start. Weizmann Institute of Science...
Bacteria that cause life-threatening infections sometimes resort to the nastiest ploy of all: Stealing the human body's defence weapons and exploiting them to their own advantage. Researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science have now uncovered one such...
Research at the Weizmann Institute of Science and Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry, focused on uncovering the activities organs, tissues and cells responsible for our body’s stress response has revealed new cells and possible new drug targets. Chronic stress is a...
Researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science have observed slow spontaneous fluctuations in the brain’s visual centres preceding visual hallucinations in blind people. Some people lose their eyesight, but continue to ‘see’. This vivid visual hallucination is named...
As the plastic in our oceans breaks up into smaller and smaller bits without breaking down chemically, the resulting microplastics are becoming a serious ecological problem. Now, a new study at the Weizmann Institute of Science and published in Nature reveals a...
A study of melanoma cells explains a puzzling response they exhibit to ward off T cell attacks. Cancers like melanoma are hard to treat, not least because they have a varied bag of tricks for defeating or evading treatments. A combined research effort by scientists...
A new study at the Weizmann Institute of Science shows that we are doubling the mass of the human-made ‘anthropogenic’ part of the world every twenty years and the curve is not flattening. Earth circa 2020: The mass of all human-produced materials – concrete, steel,...
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past, vol. 5 Communication with others – verbal and nonverbal – is part of what makes us human. These abilities are encoded in the...
The Weizmann Institute of Science has been ranked eighth globally for research quality in a weighted (proportional) ranking conducted by the Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS) of Leiden University, the Netherlands. The Weizmann Institute is one of only...
Fragrances – promising mystery, intrigue and forbidden thrills – are blended by master perfumers, their recipes kept secret. In a new study on the sense of smell, Weizmann Institute of Science researchers have managed to strip much of the mystery, even from complex...
Peculiar hybrid structures called retrons that are half RNA, half single-strand DNA are found in many species of bacteria. Since their discovery around 35 years ago, researchers have learned how to use retrons for producing single strands of DNA in the lab, but no one...
A new booklet from the Weizmann Institute of Science is now out, welcoming its latest leading scientific recruits. Introduced by Weizmann President, Professor Alon Chen, the seven new scientists join the team of over 250 principal investigators (PIs) who run labs...
New collaborative research from the United States and the Weizmann Institute of Science shows that micro cold traps near the Moon’s poles could contain a ready supply of water ice. Ice has already been detected in difficult-to-reach spots at the bottoms of large, deep...
Weizmann Institute of Science researchers have found that gut microbes and host cells jointly contribute to the progression of acute liver failure – a mostly incurable disease – yet also gave clues to treatment. Acute liver failure is a devastating, rapidly...
We cannot stop the march of time, but our perception of time can shrink or stretch. Researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science recently uncovered a new cognitive bias: The way in which we experience the passage of time can be distorted by a process where we...
Nicola Tesla thought up his alternating current induction motor while walking, Margaret Atwood comes up with ideas while bird-watching, and Archimedes was famously inspired to formulate the laws of buoyancy while sitting in his bath. Researchers at the Weizmann...
Our ancestors not only knew how to use fire, they also developed sophisticated technologies for making tools. Weizmann Institute of Science research, recently published in Nature Human Behaviour, suggest that early humans may have had a good understanding of the...
By tracking the evolution of what may be our oldest means of fighting off viral infection, a group at the Weizmann Institute of Science has uncovered a gold mine of antiviral substances that may lead to the development of highly effective antiviral drugs. These...
A research team at the Weizmann Institute of Science and Israel Institute for Biological Research, in Ness Ziona, Israel, has a new approach to understanding the COVID-19 virus that may lead to better diagnostics and treatment. ‘Contact tracing’ inside infected cells...
Pre-clinical studies at the Weizmann Institute of Research suggest a protein called Agrin could limit scarring and promote natural repair mechanisms after a heart attack. Heart disease is the number one cause of death in the world, surpassing all cancers combined....
A new approach to chronic pain treatment developed by the Weizmann Institute of Science targets a molecule that moves pain messages into nerve cell nuclei. Something like a quarter of the world’s population suffers from chronic pain at some point in their lives. As...