Research in Focus

March 9, 2023

Treating a Heart Attack before It Happens

Imagine getting treatment for a perfectly healthy young heart that would allow it to recover from an otherwise devastating injury decades later. If you think this prospect seems farfetched, you...

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March 6, 2023

Immunotherapy Drugs Step on the Gas

Sometimes anticancer antibodies press on the gas and the brakes at the same time. New research from the Weizmann Institute of Research in Israel might help them accelerate better. When...

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February 28, 2023

The Weight of Responsibility: Biomass of Livestock Dwarfs That of Wild Mammals

We often think that our world is an infinite realm comprising great plains, jungles and oceans, teeming with wild animals featured in memorable nature shows like the BBC’s Planet Earth....

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February 23, 2023

The Quantum Twisting Microscope: A New Lens on Quantum Materials

One of the striking aspects of the quantum world is that a particle, say, an electron, is also a wave, meaning that it exists in many places at the same...

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February 22, 2023

NASA to Launch Israel’s First Space Telescope Mission, ULTRASAT

NASA will launch Israel’s first space telescope – the Ultraviolet Transient Astronomy Satellite, or ULTRASAT – into high-Earth orbit in early 2026, as part of a newly signed partnership between...

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February 5, 2023

Answering a Question That Has Bugged Ecologists for Decades

Researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science have produced the first global estimate of the combined weight of all land insects and related arthropods. Arthropods crawl and buzz around us...

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January 26, 2023

Look on the Bright Side of Earth

Why do Earth’s hemispheres look equally bright when viewed from space? Weizmann Institute scientists offer a solution to this 50-year-old mystery. When looking at the Earth from space, its hemispheres...

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January 13, 2023

Building Better Enzymes – by Breaking Them Down

In a major step toward greener industry, Weizmann Institute scientists have created a computational method for generating effective enzymes with unprecedented efficiency. This new study is now published in Science,...

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November 20, 2022

Down to the Synapse: Connecting Brain Circuits to Behaviour

When a threat is looming and an escape route is open, one would expect any animal to flee imminent danger. But when microscopic worms faced a threatening signal in a...

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November 18, 2022

Weizmann Institute scientists reveal how viruses outwit cellular immune systems

We are used to thinking of the immune system as a separate entity, almost a distinct organ, but the truth is much more complicated. Breakthroughs in recent years – some...

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November 4, 2022

Weizmann Institute scientists observe NASA asteroid shooter in action

NASA’s first-ever interception of an asteroid happened in full view of researchers from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, who documented the collision’s debris last Tuesday. DART impact as seen...

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September 30, 2022

Human Tumours Are Prized Real Estate for Fungi, Study Finds

Cancer tumours contain multiple species of fungi that differ per tumour type, according to a large study led by researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science and the University of...

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September 9, 2022

Putting Liquid Biopsies on Solid Ground: Cancer Diagnosis from a Millilitre of Blood

Blood tests – simple, noninvasive and economically feasible – promise to become the next major milestone in cancer diagnosis. However, most of these tests, dubbed liquid biopsies, are currently not...

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August 26, 2022

Neurons Caught Rapidly Switching Gears

Even during routine tasks such as a daily stroll, our brain needs to shift gears, switching from navigating the city to jumping out of the way of a bike or...

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August 20, 2022

Sweetness That Comes at a Price: Sugar Substitutes May Affect the Human Body in Unanticipated Ways

Non-nutritive sweeteners – also known as sugar substitutes or artificial sweeteners – are supposed to deliver all the sweetness of sugar without the calories. But a controlled trial conducted by...

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August 5, 2022

The Viruses That Fight Disease: A Surprising Precision Weapon against Crohn’s and Ulcerative Colitis

The myriads of microbes in our gut, collectively termed the microbiome, are considered important to our health, but they can also harbour bacteria that contribute to inflammatory bowel disease or...

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August 3, 2022

Without Egg, Sperm or Womb: Synthetic Mouse Embryo Models Created Solely from Stem Cells, Outside the Uterus

An egg meets a sperm – that’s a necessary first step in life’s beginnings, and it’s also a common first step in embryonic development research. But in a Weizmann Institute...

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June 28, 2022

Curbing Candida: The Cells That Keep Fungal Infections at Bay

Of all the fungi that live in the human body, the most infamous is probably the yeast Candida. This distant cousin of baker’s yeast is notorious for causing various types...

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June 25, 2022

Scent of a Friend: Similarities in Body Odour May Contribute to Social Bonding

Weizmann Institute of Science researchers have found that people may have a tendency to form friendships with individuals who have a similar body odour.  The researchers were even able to...

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June 14, 2022

The Heat Is On: Weizmann Institute Scientists Uncover Traces of Fire Dating Back At Least 800,000 Years

They say that where there’s smoke, there’s fire, and Weizmann Institute of Science researchers are working hard to investigate that claim, or at least elucidate what constitutes ‘smoke’. In an...

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