News tagged with plos biology

Mixed bacterial communities evolve to share resources, not compete

New research shows how bacteria evolve to increase ecosystem functioning by recycling each other's waste. The study provides some of the first evidence for how interactions between species shape evolution when there is a ...

Biology / Cell & Microbiology

created May 15, 2012 | popularity 5 / 5 (1) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Is a new form of life really so alien?

The idea of discovering a new form of life has not only excited astronomers and astrobiologists for decades, but also the wider public. The notion that we are the only example of a successful life form in the galaxy has, ...

Biology / Other

created May 08, 2012 | popularity 3.6 / 5 (12) | comments 34 | with audio podcast

A long-held assumption confirmed: We can learn a lot from other species' genes

Researchers at the SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics and the EMBL-European Bioinformatics Institute have confirmed the long-held belief that studying the genes we share with other animals is useful. The study, published ...

Biology / Biotechnology

created May 17, 2012 | popularity not rated yet | comments 0

Researchers Build World's Largest Disease Association Network

(PhysOrg.com) -- If you suffer from hypertension, how much does your risk for developing diabetes or other illnesses increase? Medical experts have long known that many diseases are related to one another, ...

Biology / Other

created Apr 15, 2009 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (14) | comments 3 feature

Robots learn to share, validating Hamilton's rule (w/ video)

Using simple robots to simulate genetic evolution over hundreds of generations, Swiss scientists provide quantitative proof of kin selection and shed light on one of the most enduring puzzles in biology: Why ...

Biology / Evolution

created May 03, 2011 | popularity 4.9 / 5 (14) | comments 13 | with audio podcast

Sexual healing? Not likely

(PhysOrg.com) -- A new study shows the production of sperm is more biologically taxing than previously thought, and expending energy on it has significant health implications.

Biology / Plants & Animals

created Jan 30, 2012 | popularity 4.6 / 5 (11) | comments 8 | with audio podcast

'Worm speak' uses chemicals to communicate

(PhysOrg.com) -- A species of small, transparent roundworms have a highly evolved language in which they combine chemical fragments to create precise molecular messages that control social behavior, reports ...

Biology / Cell & Microbiology

created Jan 26, 2012 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (13) | comments 4 | with audio podcast

Mathematical model helps marathoners pace themselves to a strong finish

Most marathon runners know they need to consume carbohydrates before and during a race, but many don't have a good fueling strategy. Now, one dedicated marathoner -- an MD/PhD student in the Harvard-MIT Division ...

Other Sciences / Mathematics

created Oct 21, 2010 | popularity 4.6 / 5 (9) | comments 1 | with audio podcast

Do parasites evolve to exploit gender differences in hosts?

Some disease-causing parasites are known to favor one sex over the other in their host species, and such differences between the sexes have generally been attributed to differences in immune responses or behavior. But in ...

Biology / Plants & Animals

created Feb 28, 2012 | popularity not rated yet | comments 0 | with audio podcast

How social contact with sick ants protects their nestmates

In a research article published April 3 in the online, open-access journal PLoS Biology, Prof. Sylvia Cremer and colleagues at the Institute of Science and Technology, Austria show how micro-infections promot ...

Biology / Plants & Animals

created Apr 03, 2012 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (6) | comments 1 | with audio podcast

Caught in the act: Study discovers microbes speciating

Not that long ago in a hot spring in Kamchatka, Russia, two groups of genetically indistinguishable microbes decided to part ways. They began evolving into different species – despite the fact that they ...

Biology / Cell & Microbiology

created Feb 21, 2012 | popularity 4.6 / 5 (12) | comments 1 | with audio podcast

The story of X -- evolution of a sex chromosome

(PhysOrg.com) -- Move over, Y chromosome - it's time X got some attention. In the first evolutionary study of the chromosome associated with being female, University of California, Berkeley, biologist Doris ...

Biology / Cell & Microbiology

created Apr 16, 2009 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (11) | comments 1

Most modern European males descend from farmers who migrated from the Near East

(PhysOrg.com) -- A new study from the University of Leicester has found that most men in Europe descend from the first farmers who migrated from the Near East 10,000 years ago. The findings are published January 19 in the ...

Biology / Evolution

created Jan 19, 2010 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (11) | comments 5 | with audio podcast

Most stretchable spider silk reported

The egg sac silk of the cocoon stalk of the cave spider Meta menardi is the most stretchable egg sac silk yet tested, according to a study published Feb. 8 in the open access journal PLoS ONE.

Biology / Plants & Animals

created Feb 08, 2012 | popularity 5 / 5 (1) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

When dying, bacteria share some characteristics with higher organisms

Do bacteria, like higher organisms, have a built-in program that tells them when to die? The process of apoptosis, or cell death, is an important part of normal animal development. In a new study published March 6 in the ...

Biology / Cell & Microbiology

created Mar 06, 2012 | popularity 5 / 5 (2) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

PLoS Biology

PLoS Biology is an American scientific journal covering the full spectrum of the biological sciences that began operation on October 13, 2003.

It was the first journal of the Public Library of Science (PLoS) a non-profit organization which releases scientific content under open access terms. All content in PLoS Biology is published under the Creative Commons "by-attribution" license, abbreviated CCAL[1]. To fund the journal, the publication's business model requires that, in most cases, authors will pay publication costs.

In addition to research articles, PLoS Biology publishes online e-letters in which the readers provide their comments to the articles.

The impact factor of PLoS Biology for 2007, as calculated by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), was 13.5. To put this in context, it is the highest-ranked of all journals in the ISI category 'Biology'.

The current Academic Editor in Chief is Jonathan Eisen from U. C. Davis.

For more information about PLoS Biology, read the full article at Wikipedia.
This text uses material from Wikipedia and is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.

Related topics: fruit flies , genes , protein , brain , cells