Researchers at the University of Maine are theorizing that human beings may be in the midst of a major evolutionary shift — driven not by genes, but by culture. Cultural practices — from farming methods to legal codes — spread and adapt far faster than genes can, allowing human groups to adapt to new environments and solve novel problems in ways biology alone could never match. According to the research team, this long-term evolutionary transition extends deep into the past, it is accelerating and may define our species for millenia to come. 

Cell division is one of the most thoroughly studied processes in biology, yet many of its details remain mysterious. A century-old puzzle surrounding the “crown” of cell division – the kinetochore corona – has now been solved by Verena Cmentowski and Andrea Musacchio at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Physiology in Dortmund (MPI). Their research shows that the corona assembles through two parallel routes, beginning with a small protein “seed” and expanding into a multifunctional complex that ensures accurate chromosome segregation – and with it, the faithful transmission of life from one generation to the next.