Birds evolved ultraviolet vision several times, research finds

Ultraviolet vision evolved at least eight times in birds from a common violet sensitive ancestor finds a study published in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Evolutionary Biology. All of these are due to single nucleotide ...

What did our ancestors look like?

A new method of establishing hair and eye colour from modern forensic samples can also be used to identify details from ancient human remains, finds a new study published in BioMed Central's open access journal Investigative ...

Cheating slime mold gets the upper hand

A 'cheater' mutation (chtB) in Dictyostelium discoideum, a free living slime mould able to co-operate as social organism when food is scarce, allows the cheater strain to exploit its social partner, finds a new study published ...

Do-it-yourself viruses: How viruses self assemble

A new model of the how the protein coat (capsid) of viruses assembles, published in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Biophysics, shows that the construction of intermediate structures prior to final capsid production ...

What it is to be a queen bee?

Queen sweat bees 'choose' the role of their daughters, according to a new study published in BioMed Central's open access journal Frontiers in Zoology. The amount of food provided for the developing larvae determines whether ...

What happens to plant growth when you remove gravity?

It is well known that plant growth patterns are influenced by a variety of stimuli, gravity being one amongst many. On Earth plant roots exhibit characteristic behaviours called 'waving' and 'skewing', which were thought ...

Engineering plants for biofuels

With increasing demands for sustainable energy, being able to cost-efficiently produce biofuels from plant biomass is more important than ever. However, lignin and hemicelluloses present in certain plants mean that they cannot ...

Le Rouge et le Noir: Where the black dahlia gets its color

The molecular mechanisms whereby a spectrum of dahlias, from white to yellow to red to purple, get their colour are already well known, but the black dahlia has hitherto remained a mystery. Now, a study published in BioMed ...

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