Tracking the Winds of Climate Change
Why do parts of Earth become rainforests, whereas others turn into deserts? A new study from the Weizmann Institute of Science and Massachusetts Institute of Technology exposes the far-reaching impact...
Plant Research Reaches a New High
A South African plant called a woolly umbrella is completely unrelated to the cannabis plant, yet it makes a slew of the active compounds found in cannabis – cannabinoids –...
Decades-Old Mystery of Red Blood Cell Production Finally Solved
To get life-giving oxygen into every cell, the human body produces two to three million oxygen-carrying red blood cells, or erythrocytes, each second – about one-quarter of all the new...
Across the Universe: Israeli Tech to Reach Deep Space for the First Time
The journey to Jupiter has begun. The European Space Agency’s unmanned spacecraft JUICE (short for JUpiter ICy moons Explorer) recently launched (13 April) from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. JUICE’s voyage, the...
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...
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...
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....
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...
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...
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...
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...
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,...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...