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...
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 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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
The Weizmann Institute Of Science Receives $50 Million (USD) From The Azrieli Foundation To Help Humanity Unlock The Mysteries Of The Brain
The Weizmann Institute of Science recently announced a lead philanthropic donation of $US50 million from the Azrieli Foundation, to enable catalytic brain research with the establishment of The Azrieli Institute…
The Weizmann Institute of Science Ranked Eighth in the World for Scientific Performance
The Weizmann Institute of Science maintains its status as one of the world’s top research institutions and was recently ranked eighth globally for research quality in a weighted (proportional) ranking published…
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...
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...
Putting a Super Cork on the Coronavirus
A new therapeutic approach developed by Weizmann Institute scientists could spell new hope in the battle against COVID-19. Even though vaccines may be steering the world toward a post-pandemic normal,...
‘Emotional COVID-19’: How the Global Pandemic Affected the Mental Well-Being of Israelis
During the six weeks between the end of the first COVID-19 outbreak in Israel and the beginning of the second one (late April to early June of 2020), researchers at...
Jupiter’s Super Polar Cyclones are Here to Stay
Weizmann Institute scientists have revealed how gigantic cyclones remain stable at both of Jupiter’s poles. Until recently, before NASA’s Juno space probe entered its orbit around the planet Jupiter, no...