Alan Cowman’s group from WEHI may have found a weakness in the armour of the malaria parasite – by harnessing P. falciparum’s key defence strategy, they plan to turn it against itself.

In an elegant experiment published earlier this year, Ryszard Maleszka and his team at ANU showed that silencing a gene for DNA methylation in honey bees directly mimicked the effect of royal jelly on whether larvae go on to become queens or workers.

Young plant researcher to be awarded Goldacre medal at ComBio

Australian-trained scientist Dr Paul Trainor has made a career of making faces. In doing so, he hopes to uncover novel ways to prevent or treat congenital birth defects.

Dean DellaPenna says we are in the midst of a golden period for research into plant metabolism.

ComBio begins in Canberra next week and as part of our preview we talk to plenary speaker Rob Last about the tomato trichome project.

Researchers answer brain tumour ‘cell of origin’ question

Viruses come alive as French scientists discover new family of viruses that infects others

Swedish researchers track down the mutation that causes horses to go grey

With the lifting of two moratoria on genetically modified crops in Australia recently, so did the inevitably polarised debate take off. Those for and against are unlikely to change their minds and, unfortunately, some scientists are now afraid to speak theirs.

Nature Genetics papers find further links between pigmentation and skin cancer.