Scientists shed light on the 'dark matter' of DNA

In each cell, thousands of regulatory regions control which genes are active at any time. Scientists at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP) in Vienna have developed a method that reliably detects these regions ...

Science, such a sweet mystery

I have been teaching and doing research at the university level for more than 40 years, which means that for more than four decades, I have been participating in a deception - benevolent and well intentioned, to be sure, ...

Researchers identify insect resistance to Bt pesticide

For the first time, researchers have identified how cabbage looper caterpillars in the field develop resistance to the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), which naturally occurs in the soil and on plants and has been developed ...

Making blood-sucking deadly for mosquitoes

Inhibiting a molecular process cells use to direct proteins to their proper destinations causes more than 90 percent of affected mosquitoes to die within 48 hours of blood feeding, a UA team of biochemists found.

Bacteria use caffeine as food source

A new bacterium that uses caffeine for food has been discovered by a doctoral student at the University of Iowa. The bacterium uses newly discovered digestive enzymes to break down the caffeine, which allows it to live and ...

Resident bats use pitcher plant as toilet

(PhysOrg.com) -- The pitcher plants are carnivorous species that usually feed on insects and small vertebrates, but one species has been found that prefers to dine on the feces of bats.

Wood's 'noble rot' fungus genetically decoded

An international team including Empa researcher Francis Schwarze has sequenced the genome of the common split gill mushroom, Schizophyllum commune, a widely distributed fungus which grows on and decomposes wood. The genome, ...

Damselfish 'garden' algae

A species of damselfish, Stegastes nigricans, selectively weed the algal gardens on which they feed in order to encourage the growth of their preferred algal species of Polysiphonia and suppress the growth of less palatable ...

Plant and animal in direct competition for food

(PhysOrg.com) -- Animals often compete aggressively with each other for food or other resources, and plants often compete with each other for light, water, or other resources. Now scientists in the U.S. have found an animal ...

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