When does resistance to toxins evolve in animals?

Does a snake die when it bites its lip? Why will a mongoose survive a scorpion's sting, but we humans perish? These questions occupied the minds of toxin-enthusiasts and Master's students in Biology Jory van Thiel and Roel ...

The origin of life: A paradigm shift

According to a new concept by LMU chemists led by Thomas Carell, it was a novel molecular species composed out of RNA and peptides that set in motion the evolution of life into more complex forms.

How the dinosaur extinction changed plant evolution

With the extinction of large, non-flying dinosaurs 66 million years ago, large herbivores were missing on Earth for the subsequent 25 million years. Since plants and herbivorous animals influence each other, the question ...

Repeats are key to understanding humanity's genome

It was like a map of New York missing all of Manhattan. The human reference genome finally has all its blank spots filled in, and seeing everything we missed the first time around is both repetitive—and enlightening.

Scientists discover when beetles became prolific

Using a previously published and carefully curated 68-gene dataset, the scientists ran a battery of mathematical models to reconstruct the evolution of protein sequences—the results of which, have been published today in ...

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