How birds lost their penises

In animals that reproduce by internal fertilization, as humans do, you'd think a penis would be an organ you couldn't really do without, evolutionarily speaking. Surprisingly, though, most birds do exactly that, and now researchers ...

'Genetic programming': The mathematics of taste

The design of aromas — the flavors of packaged food and drink and the scents of cleaning products, toiletries and other household items — is a multibillion-dollar business. The big flavor companies spend tens of ...

Study of stem cell diseases advanced by new technique

A rare genetic disease called dyskeratosis congenita, caused by the rapid shortening of telomeres (protective caps on the ends of chromosomes), can be mimicked through the study of undifferentiated induced pluripotent stem ...

What 'pine' cones reveal about the evolution of flowers

(PhysOrg.com) -- From southern Africa's pineapple lily to Western Australia's swamp bottlebrush, flowering plants are everywhere. Also called angiosperms, they make up 90 percent of all land-based, plant life.

Marsupial embryo jumps ahead in development

(PhysOrg.com) -- Long a staple of nature documentaries, the somewhat bizarre development of a grub-like pink marsupial embryo outside the mother's womb is curious in another way.

Researchers rapidly turn bacteria into biotech factories

High-throughput sequencing has turned biologists into voracious genome readers, enabling them to scan millions of DNA letters, or bases, per hour. When revising a genome, however, they struggle, suffering from serious writer's ...

How a long-lost fish species was brought back to Bendigo

The southern pygmy perch hadn't been seen in Bendigo Creek since the mid-19th-century goldrush, when a booming town sprang up around the central Victorian waterway. This attractive small fish, which displays bright colors ...

Secrets of night parrot unlocked after first genome sequenced

Researchers at CSIRO, Australia's national science agency, have sequenced the first genome of the night parrot, one of the world's rarest and most elusive birds. The development will answer questions about population genetics ...

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