It’s almost the end of the year and a here’s an early holiday present! The winter issue of RIKEN Research is here, covering plant parasites, depression, atomic clocks, and more! Enjoy!

A group of scientists led by researchers have discovered a key mechanism through which spider silk is formed.

None of us would get on a plane that had its parts changed in mid-air, says Eve Marder, who has spent her career probing a very specific cluster of crustacean nerve cells. Yet we are all walking around undergoing a constant turnover of cellular parts, and so are the lobsters and crabs Marder studies.

Blue light alters some gene expression in plants by changing the transcription start sites to downstream locations.