BOSTON – For bee researchers like May Berenbaum, 2006 was the year an international consortium of researchers published the first full sequence of the honeybee genome, offering a unique and long-sought glimpse at the biological quirks of an insect that shares a productive history with humans.

Combining the use of light and genetics to control the behavior of cells in living tissue, optogenetics may lead to a more precise understanding of the brain's hugely complex neural network.

Gene therapy can be used to transform some of a pig's regular heart cells into pacemaker cells, according to a new study in Science Translational Medicine.