Researchers at the Royal Veterinary College have identified a highly specialized ligament structure that is thought to prevent giraffes' legs from collapsing under the immense weight of these animals.

"Giraffes are heavy animals (around 1000 kg), but have unusually skinny limb bones for an animal of this size" explained lead investigator Christ Basu, a PhD student in the Structure&Motion Lab. "This means their leg bones are under high levels of mechanical stress."

Sequences of DNA called enhancers, which control a gene's output, find their targets long before they are activated during embryonic development, according to scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, who write in Nature that the degree of complexity of enhancers' interactions in the 'simple' fruit fly Drosophila is comparable to what is seen in vertebrates.

Whales are relatively rare and so they probably don't make much of a difference in the overall ocean. 

A team of biologists disagrees. They reviewed several decades of research on whales from around the world and found that whales make a huge difference and have a powerful and positive influence on the function of oceans, global carbon storage, and the health of commercial fisheries. "The decline in great whale numbers, estimated to be at least 66% and perhaps as high as 90%, has likely altered the structure and function of the oceans," claims University of Vermont conservationist Joe Roman and colleagues in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, "but recovery is possible and in many cases is already underway."

The first molecular characterization of the African elephant's adipose tissue, body fat, will form the basis of future studies aimed at securing the health and future survival of captive elephants.

The population of captive elephants, both Asian and African, in Europe and North America is not self-sustaining, largely due to poor fertility and fewer baby elephants being born. Captive elephants might face demographic extinction in North American zoos within the next 50 years if the reproductive issues aren't solved. 

46 years ago, an idea was introduced that the first eggs produced in a female's fetal stage tend to have better connections or "crossovers" between chromosomes and that, as the woman ages and ovulates eggs produced later, her eggs will have more faulty chromosomes, leading to miscarriages and developmental abnormalities.   

But after counting the actual chromosome crossovers in thousands of eggs, researchers found those of eggs produced early in the fetal stage were no different from those produced later.  This rules out   the "Production-Line Hypothesis" as one of the leading ideas on why older women have an increased risk of miscarriages and children with birth defects. 

Researchers have found that the loss of a protein called p62 in the cells and tissue surrounding a tumor can enhance the growth and progression of tumors. The study suggests that therapies targeting the tumor micro-envirnonment may be as important as targeting the tumor itself. 

The findings contribute to the increasing acknowledgement that the cells and tissue surrounding a tumor, the stroma, are an integral part of cancer initiation, growth, and expansion.