Sea urchin killer spreads to new species, region
A parasite that devastated long-spined sea urchins in the Caribbean and Florida in 2022 has caused another die-off more than 7,000 miles away in the Sea of Oman.
A parasite that devastated long-spined sea urchins in the Caribbean and Florida in 2022 has caused another die-off more than 7,000 miles away in the Sea of Oman.
Plants & Animals
Mar 25, 2024
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Prokaryotic single-celled organisms, the ancestors of modern-day bacteria and archaea, are the most ancient form of life on our planet, first appearing roughly 3.5 billion years ago. The first eukaryotic cells appeared around ...
Evolution
Mar 13, 2024
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25
Single-celled organisms, such as bacteria and archaea, have developed many ways to communicate with each other. For example, they might use tiny so-called extracellular vesicles (EVs)—membrane-enveloped packages smaller ...
Cell & Microbiology
Feb 27, 2024
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7
The search for life beyond Earth fascinates many and inspires big questions: Are we truly alone in the universe? Is our Earth unique? Is it possible that life beyond Earth may actually be far from little green aliens and ...
Astrobiology
Feb 19, 2024
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29
When Profs. Joel Sussman and Israel Silman were asked to mentor Chinese students online during the COVID-19 pandemic, the last thing they expected to come out of the experience was highly innovative research on protein evolution ...
Biotechnology
Feb 14, 2024
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25
Researchers in the lab of John Kuriyan, professor of biochemistry and dean of the School of Medicine Basic Sciences, have revealed a key element of how a molecular machine responsible for high-speed DNA replication works. ...
Molecular & Computational biology
Feb 9, 2024
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50
Zebrafish are smaller than your little finger, with a brain no more than half the size of a pinhead. Yet these animals possess an efficient navigation system that enables them to find their way back to spots in the water ...
Plants & Animals
Feb 1, 2024
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10
If you still remember that "Dear King Phillip Came Over For Good Spaghetti," you'll likely also recall the corresponding taxonomic ranks of biology: domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus and species. The domains ...
Evolution
Jan 15, 2024
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92
CU Boulder geologist Brian Hynek has helped to document what may be a unique kind of ecosystem on Earth—and a possible window into the earliest stages of life on this planet 3.5 billion years ago, and even life on ancient ...
Earth Sciences
Dec 6, 2023
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The fossil calciferous skeletons of single-celled foraminifers are a beautiful history book with information on CO2-levels in the oceans of the distant past.
Earth Sciences
Nov 27, 2023
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47
A microorganism (from the Greek: μικρός, mikrós, "small" and ὀργανισμός, organismós, "organism"; also spelled micro organism or micro-organism) or microbe is an organism that is microscopic (usually too small to be seen by the naked human eye). The study of microorganisms is called microbiology, a subject that began with Anton van Leeuwenhoek's discovery of microorganisms in 1675, using a microscope of his own design.
Microorganisms are very diverse; they include bacteria, fungi, archaea, and protists; microscopic plants (called green algae); and animals such as plankton, the planarian and the amoeba. Some microbiologists also include viruses, but others consider these as non-living. Most microorganisms are unicellular (single-celled), but this is not universal, since some multicellular organisms are microscopic, while some unicellular protists and bacteria, like Thiomargarita namibiensis, are macroscopic and visible to the naked eye.
Microorganisms live in all parts of the biosphere where there is liquid water, including soil, hot springs, on the ocean floor, high in the atmosphere and deep inside rocks within the Earth's crust. Microorganisms are critical to nutrient recycling in ecosystems as they act as decomposers. As some microorganisms can fix nitrogen, they are a vital part of the nitrogen cycle, and recent studies indicate that airborne microbes may play a role in precipitation and weather.
Microbes are also exploited by people in biotechnology, both in traditional food and beverage preparation, and in modern technologies based on genetic engineering. However, pathogenic microbes are harmful, since they invade and grow within other organisms, causing diseases that kill millions of people, other animals, and plants.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA