Among the most easily recognizable features of any nervous system is the synapse. While the question of how synapses evolved has been a longstanding mystery, it can now largely be solved. In a nutshell, it appears that the ...
A key set of proteins that help regulate hormones necessary for many essential functions in humans and other vertebrates have ancient origins in much simpler creatures such as sea cucumbers, says a new study published today ...
"How are the many different cell types in the body generated during embryonic development from an egg, which is only a single cell? This is one of the most fundamental questions in biology," explains Dr. Pierre Neveu, group ...
Metamorphosis, or a dramatic change in physical appearance, is a normal part of the life cycle of many animals, carried out to take advantage of different ecological niches. Yet the process of metamorphosis—how a caterpillar ...
How does a developing embryo, which is initially round, tell left from right? This basic process is still poorly understood. However, investigating unusual cases can help shed light on how this process occurs in animals. ...
In what is likely the first study to look at how dietary preferences evolved across the animal kingdom, UA researchers looked at more than a million species, going back 800 million years. The team reports several unexpected ...
Botryllus schlosseri, a marine invertebrate that lives in underwater colonies resembling fuzzy pinheads clinging to rocks, has a blood-forming system with uncanny similarities to that of humans, according to scientists at ...
Scientists once thought that humans must have 2 million genes to account for all our complexity. But since sequencing the human genome, researchers have learned that humans only have about 19,000 to 25,000 genes—not many ...
Researchers from the University of Barcelona in collaboration with a team from the Zoological Station Anton Dohrn (Italy) have analysed the impact of diatom algae in the development of Oikopleura dioica (O. Dioica), a type ...
Whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.
