Last update A comprehensive metabolic map for production of bio-based chemicals, 1 hour ago
Cancer first develops as a single cell going rogue, with mutations that trigger aggressive growth at all costs to the health of the organism. But if cancer cells were accumulating harmful mutations faster than they could ...
The recent discovery of a new lineage of microbes has overturned biologists' understanding of the evolution of complex life on Earth. Genomic studies of Asgard archaea revealed that they carry many genes previously thought ...
An international team of researchers has found evidence that shows that many modern winged insects developed from a terrestrial ancestor, not from one that lived in the sea. In their paper published in Proceedings of the ...
Scientists have made a step forward in understanding the evolution of human feet.
Genome analysis reveals that North African date palms are a hybrid between cultivated date palms from the Middle East and a different, wild species of palm that grows on the island of Crete and in small areas of Southern ...
Short-lived wild insects "get old—losing some of their physical abilities—before they die, new research shows.
Chaetognaths, whose name means "bristle-jaw," can be found all over world, swimming in brackish estuaries, tropical seas and above the deep dark ocean floor. Also known as arrow worms, the creatures have been around since ...
Tyrannosaurus rex, renowned for being one of the most fearsome creatures to have ever lived, evolved a bite that was less impressive in relation to its body size than a tiny Galapagos ground finch, scientists say.
Bacteria, which are vital for the health of all animals, also played a major role in the evolution of animals and their tissues. In an effort to understand just how animals co-evolved with bacteria over time, researchers ...
Why are some animals committed to their mates and others are not? According to a new study led by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin that looked at 10 species of vertebrates, evolution used a kind of universal ...
A large international team of researchers has uncovered the origin of an ancient genetic mechanism needed for plant fertility.
Diet choice of animal species is highly variable. Some species are specialists feeding only on one food source, such as a sugar-rich fruit or protein-rich meat. Other species, like humans, are generalists that can feed on ...
DNA regions susceptible to breakage and loss are genetic hot spots for important evolutionary changes, according to a Stanford study. The findings may lead to new understanding of human evolution.
Adaptations to environmental change are the most important asset for the persistence of any plant or animal species. This is usually achieved through genetic mutation and selection, a slow process driven by chance. Faster ...
The critically endangered Grauer's gorilla has recently lost genetic diversity and has experienced an increase in harmful mutations. These conclusions were reached by an international team of researchers who sequenced eleven ...
Scientists at the University of Sheffield have taken a step forward in understanding how evolution has changed the photosynthesis process in wild plants to help them grow more rapidly.
A new research collaboration with support from the National Science Foundation, or NSF, begins an unprecedented study of walking cavefish to better understand the "fin-to-limb" transition that enabled the first vertebrates ...
In speech and music, words and notes depend on each other. Humans are highly sensitive to such dependencies, but the evolutionary origins of this capacity are poorly understood. Cognitive biologists at the University of Vienna ...
Known for exceptional mimicry, stick insects have evolved a range of egg-laying techniques to maximize egg survival while maintaining their disguise—including dropping eggs to the ground, skewering them on leaves, and even ...
A new study shows that the roots used by three close species of microscopic Daphnia crustaceans to settle across the territory of Northern Eurasia differed greatly. The findings shed light on how continental freshwater fauna ...
Around 4 billion years ago there lived a microbe called LUCA: the Last Universal Common Ancestor. There is evidence that it could have lived a somewhat 'alien' lifestyle, hidden away deep underground in iron-sulfur rich hydrothermal ...
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In 2003, the Human Genome Project revealed to the world the three billion chemical units within human DNA. Since that time, scientists have designed many ways to organize and assess this overwhelmingly large amount of information. ...
For hundreds of millions of years, plants thrived in the Earth's oceans, safe from harsh conditions found on land, such as drought and ultraviolet radiation. Then, roughly 450 million years ago, plants found a way to make ...
Scientists look to fossils and evolutionary trees to help determine the rate of evolution – albeit with conflicting results. A new model by ETH researchers has helped to resolve these contradictions.
As a principal investigator in the NASA Ames Exobiology Branch, Andrew Pohorille is searching for the origin of life on Earth, yet you won't find him out in the field collecting samples or in a laboratory conducting experiments ...
Whether by land or by sea, mammals live in a diverse variety of protective skins adapted against the elements, from swimming in the deepest azure oceans to climbing precipitous mountain peaks.
Gene trees, much like family trees, trace the lineage of a particular gene from its deep ancestral roots to its still-growing branches. By comparing gene trees to species trees, which map the evolutionary history of species, ...
A characteristic feature of modern humans is the unusually round skull and brain, in contrast to the elongated shape seen in other human species. By studying Neandertal DNA fragments found in the genomes of living Europeans, ...
For nearly 100 years, biologists have argued about how exactly natural selection can possibly work. If nature selects the individuals with the best genes, then why aren't all organisms the same? What maintains the genetic ...
In the beginning, life was small.
Evolution is a fascinating field but can be rife with misunderstanding. One misconception is that evolution has some innate sense of direction or purpose. In reality, evolution is a mindless, plan-free phenomenon, driven ...
Populations of indigenous people in southern Africa carry a gene that causes lighter skin, and scientists have now identified the rapid evolution of this gene in recent human history.
Iridescence is responsible for some of the most striking visual displays in the animal kingdom. Now, thanks to a new study of feathers from almost 100 modern bird species, scientists have gained new insights into how this ...
Diversity, be it genetic, morphological, behavioural or ecological, is at the heart of many controversies. It fascinates us or worries us, depending on the context. But what is biological diversity? How useful is it, how ...
Researchers at the RIKEN Center for Biosystems Dynamics (BDR) and collaborators have described for the first time the development of the hagfish inner ear. Published in the journal Nature, the study provides a new story for ...
A UMass Boston professor and his colleagues have published new research showing that feeding on human junk food may be altering the course of evolution in Darwin's finches.
Environmental damage caused by human activity can reduce the number of plant and animal species dramatically. At the same time, very little is known about how biodiversity recovers after ecosystem pollution is curtailed and ...
Many wood-inhabiting fungi suffer from the changes caused by forest management. For that reason, the different fungal groups and tree species should be better addressed in the conservation planning. New information about ...
An international group of scientists led by researchers from the University of Bristol have advanced our understanding of how ancient animals saw the world by combining the study of fossils and genetics.
The human ear, like those of other mammals, is so extraordinarily sensitive that it can detect sound-wave-induced vibrations of the eardrum that move by less than the width of an atom. Now, researchers at MIT have discovered ...
Global warming is causing increasing damage in the world's permafrost regions. As the new global comparative study conducted by the international permafrost network GTN-P shows, in all regions with permafrost soils the temperature ...
Research suggests there would be a 64 percent chance of limiting the increase in global average temperatures to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, if fossil fuel infrastructure was phased out immediately.
Sewage treatment—an unglamorous backbone of urban living—could offer a cost-effective way to combat climate change by flushing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.
For the first time, researchers have performed logic operations with a chemical device using electric fields and ultraviolet light. The device and the pioneering methods open up research possibilities, including low-power, ...
Green plants, algae and some bacteria use sunlight to convert energy. The pigments in chlorophyll absorb electromagnetic radiation, which induces chemical reactions in electrons. These reactions take place in the nucleus ...
Plasmas—hot gases consisting of chaotically-moving electrons, ions, atoms and molecules—comprise the interiors of stars, but scientists can create them artificially using special equipment in the laboratory. If a plasma ...
The production of entropy, which means increasing the degree of disorder in a system, is an inexorable tendency in the macroscopic world owing to the second law of thermodynamics. This makes the processes described by classical ...
Around 11,500 years ago, in what is now northeast Jordan, people began to live with dogs and may also have used them for hunting, according to a new study by archaeologists from the University of Copenhagen and University ...
Traditional white-striped bodypainting practiced by indigenous communities mimics zebra stripes to reduce the number of potentially harmful horsefly bites a person receives by up to 10-fold, according to new research published ...
Size does matter, at least when it comes to some hermit crabs, who appear to have evolved longer penises so they can stay in their shells to protect their homes during sex.
Fluvial landscapes and the availability of water are of paramount importance for human safety and socioeconomic growth. Hydrologists know that identifying the boundaries of floodplains is often the first crucial step for ...
Optical properties of materials are based on their chemistry and the inherent subwavelength architecture, although the latter remains to be characterized in depth. Photonic crystals and metamaterials have proven this by providing ...
Most of the colors on today's paper and fabric are made using dyes or pigments. But colors can also be produced by modifying a material's surface at the nanoscale, causing the surface to reflect or scatter different frequencies ...
Researchers at the George Washington University have taken a major step toward reaching one of the most sought-after goals in physics: room temperature superconductivity.
More than 100 years ago, Albert Einstein and Wander Johannes de Haas discovered that when they used a magnetic field to flip the magnetic state of an iron bar dangling from a thread, the bar began to rotate.
The European gypsy moth (EGM) is perhaps the country's most famous invasive insect—a nonnative species accidentally introduced to North America in the 1860s when a few escaped from a breeding experiment in suburban Boston. ...
Scientists behind the world's largest atom smasher have laid out their multibillion-euro vision to build an even bigger one, in hopes of unlocking even more secrets of matter and the universe in the coming decades.
Hundreds of meters deep in the dark of the ocean, a shark glides toward what seems like a meal. It's kind of ugly, eel-like and not particularly meaty, but still probably food. So the shark strikes.
New research, led by the University of Bristol, has shed new light on the eating habits of Neolithic people living in southeastern Europe using food residues from pottery extracts dating back more than 8,000 years.
The cyanobacteria blooms that plague western Lake Erie each summer are both an unsightly nuisance and a potential public health hazard, producing liver toxins that can be harmful to humans and their pets.
University of Alberta chemists have taken a critical step toward creating a new generation of silicon-based lithium ion batteries with 10 times the charge capacity of current cells.
The Mojave rattlesnake, living in the deserts of the southwestern United States and central Mexico, is characterized by its lethal venom that can either shut down your body or tenderize your insides. Clemson University researchers ...
Most of the native habitat in California's San Joaquin Desert has been converted to row crops and orchards, leaving 35 threatened or endangered species confined to isolated patches of habitat. A significant portion of that ...
Scientists at the University of Liverpool have taken another step forward in understanding the bacteria that are causing a devastating Salmonella epidemic currently killing around 400,000 people each year in sub-Saharan Africa.
Climate change has the potential to have affected ancient civilizations by spurring migrations and changes in cropping strategies, and the¬se questions are increasingly relevant as we look at how modern civilization is coping ...
Icy weather is blamed for multibillion dollar losses every year in the United States, including delays and damage related to air travel, infrastructure and power generation and transmission facilities. Finding effective, ...
A mass of charred seeds found while clearing a home construction site in Brantford, Ontario, has been identified as ancient, domesticated goosefoot (C. berlandieri spp. jonesianum), a form of quinoa native to Eastern North ...
Building at the nanoscale is not like building a house. Scientists often start with two-dimensional molecular layers and combine them to form complex three-dimensional architectures. And instead of nails and screws, these ...
A new and extremely sensitive method of measuring ultrasound could revolutionise everything from medical devices to unmanned vehicles.
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