The year 2014 marks the centennial of events that led to the First World War ("the war to end all wars") following the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand of the crumbling Austro-Hungarian Empire. It also marks the 120th anniversary of the birth of Stephen Rothman and the 60th anniversary of the publication of his epic textbook The Physiology and Biochemistry of the Skin. In this review, we doc...

In this, the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of the Origin of Species, it is fitting to revisit the classification of protein structures from an evolutionary perspective. Existing classifications use homologous sequence relationships, but knowing that structure is much more conserved that sequence creates an iterative loop from which stru...

This year is the 50th anniversary of Tinbergen's (1963) article 'On aims and methods of ethology', where he first outlined the four 'major problems of biology'. The classification of the four problems, or questions, is one of Tinbergen's most enduring legacies, and it remains as valuable today as 50 years ago in highlighting the value of a comprehensive, multifaceted understanding of a characte...