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The Threat of a Plant Disease Pandemic
Preparation for future pandemics should not just focus on human infections, but also those affecting the crops that millions rely on Feb 22nd 2021 Hunger and disease are inextricably linked. Not only does poor nutrition cause disease, but outbreaks of...
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Invisible allies
September 11th 2023 As the crisis of antibiotic resistance grows more acute, a new book explores whether it’s time to look to the past for solutions The Biologist’s editor, Tom Ireland, recently released his first book, The Good Virus: The Untold Story...
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Head outdoors to look for first signs of spring
The Field Studies Council and the Royal Society of Biology have teamed up to create a new interactive project which will allow nature lovers across the country to chart the arrival of the new season. The Field Studies Council and the Royal Society of...
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Learning to love Lucilia
6th September 2024 Maggots can clean wounds and stimulate them to heal like no other treatment. Tom Ireland explores how they do it, and how to overcome the ‘yuck’ factor Professor Yamni Nigam is passionate about maggots. Originally a parasitologist...
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The science of body art
21 February 2025 Former microbiologist and public health expert Julie Russell explains how her decades-long career is helping her in a very different role – as the co-owner of a tattoo and piercing studio Nobody really knows why a young man was...
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Reports
Tour of the Royal Veterinary College 18 February 2020 Our visit to the Royal Veterinary College Museum was both enlightening and a lot of fun. The museum started in the courtyard where we encountered the first specimens placed around the modern café’...
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Digging Deep: Alice Roberts
Paleopathologist Professor Alice Roberts tells Tom Ireland about working with human remains and the renaissance in TV science The Biologist Vol 60(2) p32-35 Alice Roberts read medicine before specialising in studying disease from human bone specimens –...
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Spotlight on: Photobiology
The Biologist Vol 60(4) p32-33 Photobiology studies the interaction of light with living organisms and biological systems. Photobiological responses are the result of chemical and or physical changes induced in biological systems by any non-ionising...
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An evening with Alec Jeffreys
The Biologist 63(4) p16-19 The inventor of DNA fingerprinting speaks to Alison Woollard about the scientists who inspired him and the 'eureka moment' that revolutionised forensic science In 1984, Alec Jeffreys was in his lab in Leicester when an idea...
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An evening with Sir Alec Jeffreys
The Biologist 63(4) p16-19 The inventor of DNA fingerprinting speaks to Alison Woollard about the scientists who inspired him and the 'eureka moment' that revolutionised forensic science In 1984, Alec Jeffreys was in his lab in Leicester when an idea...
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Synthesising Scientists
This summer, thousands of high school students, undergraduates and academics from around the world will be engineering novel biological devices in preparation for the iGEM competition in Boston. The Biologist takes a look at what makes this competition...
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A Meaty Mystery
Cases of a bizarre allergy to products made from mammals – including red meat, woollen clothes and some medicines – are on the rise. Maryn McKenna explains how researchers are piecing together the puzzle of its unlikely cause The Biologist 66(3) p18-21...
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‘‘There were walls of fish, so many you could hardly see the corals”
Callum Roberts tells Tom Ireland how a network of protected areas of ocean can not only save marine biodiversity but help sustain the fishing industry in the long term The Biologist 66(3) p12-15 Professor Callum Roberts is an oceanographer and...
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"The wave has only got bigger"
Co-inventor of CRISPR gene-editing technology Jennifer Doudna talks to Tom Ireland about one of the biggest science stories of the decade The Biologist 66(5) (RSB 10th Anniversary Special Issue) p10-15 In 2012 American biochemist Jennifer Doudna and...
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"The wave has only got bigger"
Co-inventor of CRISPR gene-editing technology Jennifer Doudna talks to Tom Ireland about one of the biggest science stories of the decade The Biologist 66(5) (RSB 10th Anniversary Special Issue) p10-15 In 2012 American biochemist Jennifer Doudna and...
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"For science, this is a challenging time"
Sir Paul Nurse Hon FRSB, director of the Crick Institute, on turning Europe's largest biomedical research centre into a giant testing facility. Can you summarise how the Crick shifted its focus since the pandemic began? When Coronavirus started to...
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The Patient Paradox
Margaret McCartney Pinter & Martin, £9.99 Margaret McCartney Pinter & Martin, £9.99 According to Lord Kelvin, the essence of learning about something comes from being able to express it in numbers. Biologists are getting better with numbers, and...
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Into the Twitterspere
Not on Twitter? Social media and research go hand in hand, says Rebecca Nesbit The Biologist 61(4) p8 Imagine this scenario: it's almost the end of your PhD and you're broke and jobless. Then, at a conference, you overhear a professor you'd like to...
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Biology Now event covers breadth of life sciences
The Society holds its first one-day conference, Biology Now, with talks covering a vast array of bioscience from the way DNA is packed into a cell to the macroeconomics of the natural world. Yesterday, the Society of Biology held its first one-day...
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Four out of five house spiders are males looking for love
82% of spiders spotted in the Society of Biology’s national house spider survey were males on the search for love. 82% of spiders spotted in the Society of Biology’s national house spider survey were males on the search for love. The survey, which ran...
