Edward Osborne Wilson (1929–2021) a biologist, naturalist, writer, one of the greatest scientific minds of the 20th century, passed away this week. On that occasion here is a personal remembrance by our colleague Milan Janda.
A fundamental part of studying evolutionary biology and molecular ecology is the bioinformatic processing of raw sequenced DNA and optimizing specific parts of this processing is currently a key challenge in these fields. For instance, there are no specific guidelines on the optimal parameters for the assembly of contiguous sequences of DNA (contigs) without a reference genome (de novo...
CRISPR/Cas9 knockout mosquitoes lack the enzymes needed to synthesize either juvenile hormone or both juvenile hormone and its non-epoxidated precursor. Reduced fitness of the former reveals the biological significance of the epoxidation step.
A complaint about plagiarism was delivered to the editors of the European Journal of Entomology (EJE), which is published by the Institute of Entomology of the Biology Centre, Czech Academy of Sciences in cooperation with the Czech Entomological Society. A scientific article published in EJE in 2019 was completely copied by an online journal called “Modern Sciences Journal”, including all...
Biologist Vojtěch Novotný received the prestigious Praemium Academiae 2021 award. The Czech Academy of Sciences supports this important scientific award with a generous grant of up to 30 million crowns, which laureates can draw over six years. It is to be a financial as well as a symbolic moral award for the scientific excellence of the laureates. "They are really the best of the best,"...
Our colleague Miguel Gonzalez Ximenez de Embun from the Institute of Entomology, Biology Centre CAS, won the runner-up price on the science communication competition: FameLab Final of the Czech Republic. CONGRATULATIONS!
In a recent paper published in Insect Systematics and Diversity, we investigated three butterfly species of dry grasslands, all extremely declining throughout Central Europe, despite their large overall distribution ranges. We reviewed the recent history of their populations on Central European scale, compiled field observation data, notes from captive breeding and reintroduction or assisted...
Intensification of agriculture has resulted in widespread use of antiparasitics, mostly macrocyclic lactones, which harms non-target organisms. Residues of such antiparasitics do primarily affect dung beetles, who provide keystone ecosystem services for pasture functioning
We studied the reaction mechanism of the carboxylic acids esterification in aqueous media mediated by alkyl chloroformates on macroscale and microscale by 1H NMR, LC-MS, GC-MS, stable isotope labeling and computational quantum chemistry.
In the study, we report a more comprehensive approach enabling rapid GC-MS screening of sixteen acidic biomarkers in urine that are metabolized in the human body after exposition to several important industrial chemicals.
