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Gene AMY1, which kickstarts digestion of starch in the mouth, is associated with blood glucose levels and digestion of carbohydrates, with implications for understanding human evolutionary biology and the gut microbiome.
Planktonic foraminifera (forams) - tiny, shelled organisms that float in the sea—left behind one of the most complete fossil records of evolutionary history in deep sea deposits. Consequently, evolutionists have a relatively ...
House mice carrying a specific selfish supergene move from one population to another much more frequently than their peers. This finding from a University of Zurich study shows for the first time that a gene of this type ...
Color vision, consisting of ocular color detection, is achieved with complicated neural mechanisms in the eyes. Researchers from Osaka City University in Japan have found color detection with a simple mechanism in the fish ...
Are human disturbances to the environment driving evolutionary changes in animals and plants? A new study conducted by McGill researchers finds that, on average, human disturbances don't appear to accelerate the process of ...
Dolphins, whales and other cetaceans are susceptible to many of the same health hazards as humans including mercury, brevotoxin (e.g. Red Tide), and lobomycosis. They also serve as important sentinel species to highlight ...
Scientists at Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech) have discovered a gene that appears to play a vital role in pheromone sensing. The gene is conserved across fish and mammals and over 400 million years of vertebrate ...
Retroviruses have colonised vertebrate hosts for millions of years by inserting their genes into host genomes, enabling their inheritance through generations as endogenous retroviruses (ERVs). Researchers from Uppsala University ...
Snapdragons are tall, charming plants, and flower in a range of bright colors. In Spain, where snapdragons grow wild, these flower colors show a remarkable pattern: When driving up a road from Barcelona to the Pyrenees, snapdragons ...
Female guppies with smaller brains can distinguish attractive males, but they don't recognise them as being more appealing or choose to mate with them, according to a new study by UCL and Stockholm University researchers.
Japanese scientists have shed light on the evolutionary biology and distribution of Stenopsyche caddisflies, also known as sedge flies, a common insect in Japanese rivers, and a local delicacy. The discovery also identified ...
Males and females mate to produce offspring, but their relationships are not always cooperative. The conflict between the sexes when they behave selfishly can be negative for the whole group. A group of Japanese researchers ...
A pair of researchers at Flinders University has found evidence that suggests modern kangaroos diversified due to grassland expansion, not drying during the Miocene, as previous studies have shown. In their paper published ...
A team of researchers from Germany, Madagascar and the U.S. has found evidence that suggests fruit-bearing plants have evolved to produce fruit that communicates ripeness with a particular smell that attracts the animals ...
House sparrows are closely associated with humans and are found in most parts of the world. By investigating the DNA of several species of sparrows, researchers have shown that the house sparrow diverged from a sparrow in ...
Some 50 million years before humans figured it out, agriculture arrived in the world in a seemingly unlikely place: an ant hill.
Through clever partner selection, animals can increase the future success of their offspring. With some species, this process continues even after the sex act. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology ...
Japanese researchers investigated whether a dominant tree of warm temperate broadleaved forests in Japan, Castanopsis sieboldii, underwent northward migration over hundreds of kilometres from Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) (about ...
Green algae that evolved to tolerate hostile and fluctuating conditions in salt marshes and inland salt flats are expected to survive climate change, thanks to hardy genes they stole from bacteria, according to a Rutgers-led ...
How do the large-scale patterns observed in evolution arise? A new paper in the journal Evolution by researchers at Uppsala University and University of Leeds argues that many of them are a type of statistical artefact caused ...
Researchers from the Stowers Institute for Medical Research have opened a window on another piece of evolutionary biology. They have found that Hox genes, which are key regulators of the way the bodies of bilaterally symmetrical ...
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The natural world is full of examples of what biologists call convergent evolution—instances where unrelated creatures developed similar traits in response to similar evolutionary pressures.
A team of international scientists has discovered why brown tree snakes have become one of the most successful invasive species.
Many wild and cultivated plants arise through the combination of two species. The genome of these so-called polyploid species often consists of a quadruple set of chromosomes—a double set for each parental species—and ...
Red plums. Green melons. Purple figs. Ripe fruits come in an array of greens, yellows, oranges, browns, reds and purples. Scientists say they have new evidence that plants owe their rainbow of fruit colors to the different ...
In 1959, Russian scientists began an experiment to breed a population of silver foxes, selecting and breeding foxes that exhibited friendliness toward people. They wanted to know if they could repeat the adaptations for tameness ...
A new study of house sparrows' genes has found the first evidence of animals adapting to lead contamination in heavily polluted areas of Australia.
By studying the genome of a kind of octopus not known for its friendliness toward its peers, then testing its behavioral reaction to a popular mood-altering drug called MDMA or "ecstasy," scientists say they have found preliminary ...
Scientists have challenged the theory of "love at first sight" after discovering that they can boost the reproductive success of zebrafish by pairing them by personality, rather than appearance.
Noticing that songbirds, such as finches, never seem to get fat despite overeating at bird feeders, London environmental biologist Lewis Halsey wondered whether the amount of energy birds put into singing, fidgeting, or exercising ...
Harvard researchers have developed a computational model that can mimic, with only a few, simple parameters, the complex wing patterns of a large group of distantly-related insects, shedding light on how these patterns form.
Accumulating evidence suggests that new genes can arise spontaneously from previously non-coding DNA instead of through the gradual mutation of established genes. Bioinformaticians at the University of Münster (Germany) ...
Two to three million years ago, the functional loss of a single gene triggered a series of significant changes in what would eventually become the modern human species, altering everything from fertility rates to increasing ...
It was long thought that DNA, together with the genes encoded in it, determined genetic destiny. But equally important is coordinating when genes are turned on and off. In fact, the regulation of gene expression defines life ...
MRSA staphylococcus is an example of a superbug. These bacterial strains are resistant to most antibiotics and can cause serious infections.
One of the great puzzles of evolutionary biology is what induced certain living creatures to abandon solitary existence in favor of living in collaborative societies, as seen in the case of ants and other social, colony-forming ...
Yeasts are some of the most important microbes used in biotechnology. Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the type of yeast used for making bread and beer, is just one representative of more than 1,500 yeast species found around the ...
Side-blotched lizards in most of the Mojave Desert have tan and brown markings that blend in well with their desert surroundings. On the Pisgah Lava Flow, however, one finds a very different population of side-blotched lizards, ...
A study of a songbird and a bacterium that infects it has revealed how species in conflict evolve in response to each other.
A team of scientists led by Professor Richard Layfield at the University of Sussex has published breakthrough research in molecule-based magnetic information storage materials.
The embryonic stem cells that form facial features, called neural crest cells, use an unexpected mechanism of moving from the back of the head to the front to populate the face, finds a new UCL-led study.
Measuring the properties of superconducting materials in magnetic fields at close to absolute zero temperatures is difficult, but necessary to understand their quantum properties. How cold? Lower than 0.05 Kelvin (-272°C).
Scientists at Oregon State University have shed light on the evolutionary history of a soil-borne bacteria that is so dangerous to grazing animals it is kept behind lock-and-key to prevent its spread.
With a body the size of a fist and wings that span more than a foot, the big brown bat must gorge on 6,000 to 8,000 bugs a night to maintain its stature. This mighty appetite can be a boon to farmers battling crop-eating ...
For many years, quantum computers were not much more than an idea. Today, companies, governments and intelligence agencies are investing in the development of quantum technology. Robert König, professor for the theory of ...
Researchers at the Center for Quantum Nanoscience (QNS) within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) in South Korea have made a major scientific breakthrough by detecting the nuclear magnetism, or "nuclear spin" of a single ...
One of the balancing acts faced by conservation agencies is how to conserve and protect as many species as possible from extinction with limited funding and finite resources. In the U.S., conservation agencies are supported ...
The word "HAZMAT" describes substances that pose a risk to the environment, or even to life itself. Imagine the term being applied to entire planets, where violent flares from the host star may make worlds uninhabitable by ...
An ancient group of microbes that contains some of the smallest life forms on Earth also has the smallest CRISPR gene-editing machinery discovered to date.
A team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in the U.S. has come up with a new type of cermet that could prove especially useful as a heat exchanger in solar power plants. In their paper published in the journal ...
An international team of researchers has successfully produced a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) in space for the first time. In their paper published in the journal Nature, the group describes creating a small experimental ...
Big Data is all the rage today, but Small Data matters too! Drawing reliable conclusions from small datasets, like those from clinical trials for rare diseases or in studies of endangered species, remains one of the trickiest ...
Some bacterial pathogens, including those that cause strep throat and pneumonia, are able to create the components necessary to replicate their DNA without the usually required metal ions. This process may allow infectious ...
Research carried out by the University of Kent sheds light on the infanticidal behaviour of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and demonstrates that females are highly sensitive to the relative risks posed to their babies by different ...
Argonne scientists have identified a new class of topological materials made by inserting transition metal atoms into the atomic lattice of a well-known two-dimensional material.
Evgenij Zubko of Far Eastern Federal University (FEFU), in collaboration with international team members, has developed a comprehensive model to explain the results of the recent photometric study of the comet Schwassmann-Wachmann ...
Researchers in Singapore can now explain what gives the mantis shrimp, a marine crustacean that hunts by battering its prey with its club-like appendages, the most powerful punch in the animal kingdom. In a paper publishing ...
Pioneering research has given a fascinating fresh insight into how animal nervous systems evolved from simple structures to become the complex network transmitting signals between different parts of the body.
Personal electronic devices—smartphones, computers, TVs, tablets, screens of all kinds—are a significant and growing source of the world's electronic waste. Many of these products use nanomaterials, but little is known ...
Controlling individual brain cells using light-sensitive proteins has proven to be a powerful tool for probing the brain's complexities. As this branch of neuroscience has expanded, so has the demand for a diverse palette ...
A new paper written by academics at Royal Holloway and George Washington University, predicts reliable patterns in violent events occurring within wars and terrorism, regardless of geography, ethnicity and religion.
New observations by two Arizona State University astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have caught a red dwarf star in a violent outburst, or superflare. The blast of radiation was more powerful than any such outburst ...
Inside smartphones and computer displays are metals known as the rare earths. Mining and purifying these metals involves waste- and energy-intense processes. Better processes are needed. Previous work has shown that specific ...
Scientists recreated deep sea conditions from the last ice age and found that the tropical Pacific contained more carbon and less oxygen during that period than previously thought.
Trypanosoma brucei, which causes sleeping sickness, evades the immune system by repeatedly altering the structure of its surface coat. Sequencing of its genome and studies of its 3-D genome architecture have now revealed ...
A two-year cycle in the gamma-ray brightness of a blazar, a galaxy powered by a supermassive black hole, has been confirmed by 10 years of observations from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. The findings were announced ...
Research from King's College London has shown for the first time that genetics plays a significant role in whether young adults choose to go to university, which university they choose to attend and how well they do.
Fuels, plastics, and other products are made using catalysts, materials that drive chemical reactions. To design a better catalyst, scientists must get the right atoms in the right spot. Positioning the atoms can be difficult, ...
A measurable criterion now exists for determining the age rating of films. A group of scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz has found that the concentration of isoprene in cinema air correlates with ...
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