avenues to the study of spinal cord regeneration. - A research team led by Mónica Bettencourt Dias shed light upon the critical mechanism of how oocytes, the maternal gametes, lose centrioles and the importance of doing so for female fertility. The results published in the scientific journal Science in May 2016 showed that centrioles normally have a coating that protects them which is lost inside the oocyte, eliminating therefore the centrioles. They further show that if the centrioles are not eliminated, those mothers are sterile. - IGC scientists led by Miguel Godinho Ferreira found that certain organs, such as the gut, start to age before other tissues because its cells have a "timekeeper" with a faster pace. The results published in the journal PLoS Genetics in January 2016 also showed that monitoring the pace of these timekeepers can be a good indicator for the aging of the whole organism since the appearance of local age-related lesions anticipates the onset of age-associated diseases, such as cancer. - Research led by Raquel Oliveira, has elucidated how cells are almost blind to chromosome cohesion defects. The results published in Cell Reports in October 2015 uncovered how these defects, often associated with cancer development, congenital diseases and infertility, evade the strict surveillance of the checkpoint mechanisms that ensure faithful genome segregation. - Ana Domingos and her group have shown that fat tissue is innervated and that direct stimulation of neurons in fat is sufficient to induce fat breakdown. These results published in September 2015 in the journal Cell, set up the stage for developing novel anti-obesity therapies. - Studies on the bacteria Wolbachia conducted by Luis Teixeira and his research group revealed that a single genomic change can turn beneficial bacteria into pathogenic bacteria, by boosting bacterial density inside the host. Wolbachia is a bacterium commonly present in insect species that can protect their hosts against viruses, including the dengue fever virus. These findings were published in the journal PLoS Biology in February 2015, in the first study linking genes and their functions in the Wolbachia bacterium and providing a starting point for the understanding of the widespread insect-Wolbachia symbiosis. - In a study published in the scientific journal Cell in December 2014, a research team at IGC led by Miguel Soares discovered that specific bacterial components in the human gut microbiota can trigger a natural defence mechanism that is highly protective against malaria