For MCB postdoctoral researcher Colin Kim, studying plants means discovering what talented chemists they can be—and learning how their molecular machinery might be harnessed to make medicines. Kim, […...

How do plants that first appeared hundreds of millions of years ago produce molecules that may one day help treat human disease? That question is at the heart […]

Sometimes, groundbreaking discoveries begin with what looks like a failed experiment. Researchers in the lab of MCB Professor Nicholas Bellono have discovered that octopuses possess a unique structura...

Wendy Valencia-Montoya, a Junior Fellow in the Harvard Society of Fellows affiliated with the lab of MCB Professor Nick Bellono, has been awarded two of the most coveted […]

Rebecka Sepela, a postdoctoral researcher in Nicholas Bellono’s MCB lab, has received an NIH Pathway to Independence (K99/R00) Award to study how animals derive information from their external […]

Certain shallow-water species carry a mutation that reduces translation errors and prevents toxic protein buildup

The Pew Charitable Trusts today announced the 21 researchers joining the Pew Scholars Program in the Biomedical Sciences. These early-career scientists will receive four years of funding to explore cu...

Two MCB postdoctoral researchers, Matthew Capek and Ruoyu (Roy) Chen, have been awarded prestigious fellowships from the Jane Coffin Childs Fund for Medical Research, one of the nation’s […]

Rebecka Sepela, a postdoctoral fellow in the MCB lab of Nick Bellono, has won a 2026 Warren Alpert Distinguished Scholars Fellowship Award in Neuroscience from The Warren Alpert […]

New research reveals how octopuses essentially have a tongue, an arm, a penis and a sperm cell all rolled into one appendage.

Scientists found that the male’s hectocotylus, the specialized arm for mating, is lined with receptors that can sense hormones from the female.

Sensory organ in male cephalopod, known as hectocotylus, able to detect female hormone progesterone, even if male cannot see partner Sex might seem an intimate act, but scientists have shed fresh light on how octopuses manage it at arm’s length. Male octopuses use a specialised arm called the hectocotylus to place a package of sperm inside the female’s reproductive system. Continue reading...

A new study (PDF) from the MCB lab of Nicholas Bellono reveals an unexpected sensory mechanism underlying octopus reproduction—showing that a specialized arm used for mating is also […]

The Harvard Museum of Natural History will host a special Science Spotlights in-person event on Saturday, April 4, from 2:00–3:30 pm, featuring emerging scientists across Harvard, including MCB’s […]

A new study in Current Biology (PDF) sheds light on how a critical protein underlying hearing evolved to perform its specialized role in vertebrate sensory systems—offering a rare […]

Integrating evolutionary analysis, structural modeling, and electrophysiology, Akyuz et al. show that TMC1 and TMC2 arose by gene duplication and evolved specialized extracellular regions. In TMC1, an...

Wendy Valencia Montoya has been named a recipient of the prestigious 2026 Harold M. Weintraub Award in recognition of her doctoral thesis, an ambitious and interdisciplinary body of […]

Ryan Nett, MCB assistant professor, has been named a recipient of the 2025–27 George W. Merck Fellowship. Awarded annually to outstanding tenure-track faculty, the prestigious two-year fellowship prov...

Two postdoctoral researchers affiliated with MCB have been awarded highly competitive Postdoctoral Pioneer Fellowships from the Harvard Brain Initiative (HBI), recognizing innovative projects that spa...

A new study shows that infrared radiation is a pollination signal, one far older than the vivid colors that later became dominant among flowering plants.

While many modern plants use colorful flowers to attract pollinators, ancient palm-like plants called cycads lure them by heating up and glowing in the infrared.

Since the time of the dinosaurs, cycad plants may have attracted insects using infrared light. It may be the world's oldest form of pollination.

New research of strange “cycad” plants offers a glimpse into the prehistoric origins of pollination

Dr. Rebecka Sepela’s research is uncovering the role of microbes in creating a chemical language that connects all organisms

MCB postdoctoral fellow Rebecka Sepela has been selected as one of the 2025 L’Oréal USA For Women in Science (FWIS) Fellows, a prestigious honor recognizing early-career scientists whose […]

Postdoctoral fellow Anastasiia Sukalskaia has received a prestigious Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) Postdoc.Mobility Fellowship, which will support her research in the lab of MCB’s Nicholas ...

Two recent studies from the MCB lab of Nick Bellono will be featured on the cover of Cell this month, highlighting the lab’s ongoing exploration of unconventional model […]

By the time Wendy  Valencia Montoya arrived at Harvard, she had already lived in tents deep in the Amazon, crisscrossed Europe to study evolutionary biology, and uncovered genetic […]

MCB faculty member Ryan Nett has been named a 2025 Pew Scholar in the Biomedical Sciences, one of 22 early-career scientists selected nationwide for their promising and innovative […]

MCB congratulates Carolyn Elya, Assistant Professor of MCB and affiliate of the Center for Brain Science, on receiving a Klingenstein Fellowship Award in Neuroscience. This competitive early-career aw...