Robot Builders

It’s probably not what you think. Every year, and shortly after a full moon, billions of corals across a third of a million square kilometers of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef enter in a frenzy of reproduction. Now, an international team of Australian and Israeli researchers has discovered the key to this moonlight romance. It is an ancient light-sensitive gene, known as a cryptochrome, which is present not only in corals, but in insects, fish and mammals — including humans. These genes are primitive light-sensing pigment mechanisms which predate the evolution of eyes — and are pretty sensitive to blue light. read story