Research in Focus

June 1, 2022

Changing the Channel: Study Sheds New Light on a Promising Antidepressant

Ketamine, a well-known anaesthetic used in smaller doses as a party drug, was hailed as a “new hope for depression” in a Time magazine cover story in 2017. Two years...

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May 27, 2022

Harder Winters, Stronger Storms: New Data Reveals Climate Change Might Be More Rapid than Predicted

The Earth’s climate is changing faster than we expected. A new study led by the Weizmann Institute of Science reveals that storms in the Southern Hemisphere have already reached intensity...

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May 27, 2022

Settled at Birth: Blood Vessels Remember Their Origins

Our family origins tend to shape our future in many ways. A Weizmann Institute of Science study, published in Nature, found that the same holds true for blood vessels. The...

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April 25, 2022

Designing Proteins Just Got a Lot Easier

Studies at the Weizmann Institute of science is shows that AI is providing researchers the means to design biomolecules with a huge range of valuable functions – from medicine to...

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April 6, 2022

Getting Under the Skin of an Autoimmune Disorder

Supporting actors sometimes steal the show, and in a new study published this week in Cell, researchers, headed by Professor Ido Amit at the Weizmann Institute of Science, showed that...

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April 1, 2022

Mutations in Noncoding DNA Protect the Brain from ALS

Genetic mutations linked to a disease often spell bad news. Mutations in over 25 genes, for example, are associated with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and they all increase the risk...

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March 24, 2022

Antibodies Fight Cancer Too

Immunotherapies for cancer rely on recruiting the patient’s immune system, but they still fall far short of tapping into the entire arsenal of the body’s natural defences. In fact, most...

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March 23, 2022

Israel Joins the Quantum Computing Club

Building a working quantum computer is such a daunting venture that many believe it is only for tech giants and superpowers, something on a scale beyond Israel’s reach. However, Professor...

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February 1, 2022

Tracking Multiple Genes with Flying Colours

Even fans of black-and-white film cannot deny that colour brought new life to photography and motion pictures – but when it comes to learning what happens inside the body, there’s...

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January 24, 2022

A Noninvasive Test for Gut Inflammation

Today, people suspected of having inflammatory bowel disease are often required to undergo a colonoscopy, an invasive procedure performed under anaesthesia. A new method developed at the Weizmann Institute of...

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December 22, 2021

Muscle Repair Study Could Lead to Better Cultivated Meat

One day the Weizmann Institute of Science’s Professor Eldad Tzahor peered into his lab’s microscope and saw steak. As part of Tzahor’s research into repairing muscle tissue, Dr Tamar Eigler,...

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December 12, 2021

Going Out with a Bang

In the not-so-distant past, the discovery of a supernova – an exploding star – was considered a rare occasion. For example, when Professor Avishay Gal-Yam of the Weizmann Institute’s Particle...

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December 11, 2021

Gut Microbes May Drive Weight Gain after Smoking Cessation

Cigarette smoking, practiced by over a billion people worldwide, is considered a leading cause of disease, accounting for over six million deaths each year. Many people don’t quit smoking, despite...

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December 11, 2021

Insulin-Making Cells Discovered in Foetal Gut

An exclusive ‘licence’ for making insulin in the human body belongs to the beta cells scattered throughout the pancreas. But because beta cells can become scarce or dysfunctional in people...

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December 2, 2021

Bacteria and Plants Fight Alike

A brown blotch on a plant leaf may be a sign that the plant’s defences are hard at work: When a plant is infected by a virus, fungus or bacterium,...

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October 29, 2021

Jupiter’s Great Red Spot Measured in Depth for the First Time

Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is up there with the rings of Saturn and the blue marble of Earth for solar system icon status. In a study published this week in Science,...

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October 16, 2021

Making Cancer Immunotherapy More Accessible

Immunotherapy has sparked new hope for people with cancer, but for it to work, the patient’s immune system must be able to ‘see’ the tumour. There are ways of enhancing...

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October 9, 2021

Cells and the City

Tracing the evolution of protein maintenance in cellular ‘boroughs’, students of the Weizmann Institute’s Professor Dan Tawfik’s have now published their study following his untimely death. When we contemplate the...

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September 26, 2021

When Particle Physics and Artificial Intelligence Collide

A new research pilot by Weizmann Institute scientists uses artificial intelligence to unravel the mysteries of colliding particles “Our work is similar to inspecting the remains of a plane crash...

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September 10, 2021

Rediscovering the Nucleus

A novel imaging method reveals a surprising arrangement of DNA in the cell’s nucleus as reported by the Weizmann Institute of Science. If you open a biology textbook and run...

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