Science - News & Events | Trinity College Dublin

Size matters! Flock numbers and new faces are important in boosting flamingo populations

Flocking flamingos in groups of 50 or more and introducing new faces to a population may hold the keys to encouraging successful reproduction, according to a study published this month in Zoo Biology, which was led by Trinity zoologists.

26 Jan 2023

Environment|Research|Science

Discovery offers significant hope for improved vaccines

Scientists have discovered there is a “Goldilocks” effect in identifying the size of a “vaccine adjuvant” that can trigger strong immune responses and, as an example, have shown that a safe, biodegradable adjuvant can boost the action of cancer-killing cells – if the particles are the correct size.

20 Jan 2023

Health|Research|Science

Bees exposed to EU’s most common weedkiller via wildflower nectar

Bees may be at risk from exposure to glyphosate – an active ingredient in some of the EU’s most commonly used weedkillers – via contaminated wildflower nectar, according to new research from Trinity and DCU scientists.

17 Jan 2023

Environment|Research|Science|Sustainability

Humans continue to evolve with the emergence of new genes

Modern humans evolutionarily split from our chimpanzee ancestors nearly 7 million years ago, yet we are continuing to evolve – with new analyses conducted by scientists from Trinity highlighting that two new human-specific “microgenes” have arisen from scratch.

20 Dec 2022

Research|Science

Immune surprise: unexpected function for recently evolved alarm molecule in driving inflammation

Scientists from Trinity have made an important breakthrough in understanding how inflammation is regulated. They have just discovered that a key immune alarm protein previously believed to calm down the immune response actually does the opposite.

16 Dec 2022

Health|Research|Science

Professor Luke O’Neill appointed to ERC Scientific Council

Composed of 22 distinguished researchers representing the European scientific community, the Council is the independent governing body of the European Research Council (ERC). Its main role is setting the ERC strategy and selecting the peer review evaluators.

8 Dec 2022

Research|Science

Ancient amphibians had their bones cooked

Scientists have solved a decades-long mystery as to why ancient tetrapods – amphibian-like creatures that lived over 300 million years ago – preserved in one of Ireland’s most important fossil sites seemingly had their bones cooked after they died.

7 Dec 2022

Environment|Research|Science

Genetic causes of bone tumours discovered in 1,000-year-old Irish skeletons

Two men buried long ago in a medieval graveyard in Co. Donegal had a genetic condition called Multiple Osteochondromas, which causes benign bone tumours. One of the disease mutations is a new discovery, so this is the first time such information has been unlocked from ancient genomic data.

5 Dec 2022

Health|Research|Science

Scientists homing in on why COVID-19 affects people so differently

Researchers from the Institut Pasteur, Inserm, St. James’s Hospital Dublin and Trinity are getting closer to understanding what makes some people so vulnerable to COVID-19-induced illness, which in turn may guide the development of new therapeutic strategies.

1 Dec 2022

Health|Research|Science

Using technology to transform how we identify neurodegenerative disease

In a new study published in Translational Psychiatry, researchers at the Global Brain Health Institute (GBHI) and the School of Psychology at Trinity College describe how technology can help detect early signs of cognitive decline in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s.

30 Nov 2022

Health|Research|Science