Get curated editors’ picks, peeks behind the scenes, film recommendations and more.
How is the human body able to produce antibodies to mount a defence against any attacking microorganism – even those it’s never encountered before? After all, our mere 20,000 genes seem woefully inadequate to produce the billions of different antibodies necessary to fight every possible disease. The problem stumped researchers for decades until the Japanese scientist Susumu Tonegawa discovered the key to our incredible adaptive capacity for fighting contagions – an accomplishment that earned him the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1987. The answer, explored in this brief animation from Nature, lies in recombination-activating genes (RAGs) – DNA-‘shuffling’ enzymes that can create proteins capable of fighting any foreign invader.
Video by Nature
Animator: Dog & Rabbit
video
Ecology and environmental sciences
Producing food while restoring the planet – a glimpse of farming in the future
7 minutes
video
Astronomy
From zero to 5,000 – music and visuals express 30 years of exoplanet discoveries
1 minute
video
Ecology and environmental sciences
Yo-Yo Ma performs a work for cello in the woods, accompanied by a birdsong chorus
4 minutes
video
Art
A massive art installation attempts to put the COVID-19 deaths in perspective
15 minutes
video
Ageing and death
Death is a trip – how new research links near-death and DMT experiences
9 minutes
video
The environment
Photographs of rainforests dissolving in acid strike a beautiful note of warning
10 minutes
video
Technology and the self
Adaptive technologies have helped Stephen Hawking, and many more, find their voice
5 minutes
video
Ecology and environmental sciences
Experience the dazzling displays that fireflies create when humans are far away
5 minutes
video
Ecology and environmental sciences
To renew Yosemite, California should embrace a once-outlawed Indigenous practice
6 minutes