Latest science news in Biology & Nature
Animals given taurine supplements in ‘groundbreaking’ study had longer lifespans
Depositphotos Taurine, the energy-boosting compound in some caffeinated beverages, may help you reach your golden years—if you’re a critter, anyway. A new animal study published today in Science claims that taurine supplements extended...
Ecologists highlight the invisible effects of human activity on nature
Discussions at the recent COP15 biodiversity conference in Montréal highlighted once again the impact of human activities on wildlife. Many species are forced to migrate, are seeing their populations declining,...
Unlocking the blood-nerve barrier to facilitate drug delivery
A UCL-led research team has opened and closed the blood-nerve barrier for the first time and used it to deliver drugs to target tissues.
Watch: Rattlesnake takes a swim in Arizona resident's pool
An Arizona snake wrangler called to capture a rattlesnake in a resident's back yard captured video of the moment the venomous reptile took a drink from the swimming pool and...
When Water Temperatures Change, the Molecular Motors of Cephalopods Do Too
Working with live squid hatchlings at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego scientists find the animals can tune their proteome on the fly in response to changes in ocean...
Scientists discover how plants fight major root disease
Researchers led by Chen Yuhang and Zhou Jianmin from the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have shown how plants resist clubroot, a major...
Long-term analysis finds seagull attacks contribute to death of southern right whale calves
A small international team of marine scientists has found that a drop in southern right whale populations who spend part of their lives off the coast of Argentina, is due...
Complete chloroplast genomes clarify phylogenetic placement of six polygonatum species
Polygonatum Miller is highly valued for its medicinal properties with the horizontal creeping fleshy roots. Previous studies have mainly focused on the size and gene content of the plastid genome,...
Sharks and humans sharing waters along California coast more often than previously thought
A team of biologists at California State University Long Beach has found that sharks and humans are sharing the waters along California's shore much more often than previously thought. In...
Auliʻi Cravalho says her ‘Hailey’s On It’ character is brave, outspoken like Moana
Auliʻi Cravalho says the character she plays in the new Disney animated series, "Hailey's On It," shares some important characteristics with the iconic heroine she voiced in 2016's "Moana."
Illinois team finds reliable predictor of plant species persistence, coexistence
Plant biologist James O'Dwyer and graduate student Kenneth Jops report in Nature the development of a method that reliably predicts the complementary life histories of pairs of plants that manage...
RNA editing helps octopuses cope with the cold
The ocean can be a cold place to call home. Mammals like seals stay warm by enveloping themselves in a layer of thick fur and blubber. Cephalopods — the group of (mostly)...
Night Sky stargazing app review
Night Sky is a stargazing app built on ease of use and a sense of wonder.
Gene therapy could be used as birth control for cats, small study suggests
A new study shows that gene therapy could be an effective form of birth control for cats.
Pulling its weight: Team identifies protein key to chromosome movement during cell division
During cell division, chromosomes, i.e., molecules containing our genetic material, must be properly replicated and segregated so that each daughter cell receives a complete and accurate set. Now, in an...
New knowledge of ancient grain: Researchers map complete millet genome to help with food security
An international team of researchers has unlocked a large-scale genomic analysis of Setaria or foxtail millet, an important cereal crop. The study, led by researchers at the Chinese Academy of...
Study: Octopuses use RNA editing to rapidly respond to temperature changes by altering protein function
Each cell comes with a finite set of instructions encoded in its DNA. Life, however, is unpredictable, and when circumstances change, animals need flexibility to acclimate. New research led by...
When water temperatures change, the molecular motors of cephalopods do too
Cephalopods are a large family of marine animals that includes octopuses, cuttlefish and squid. They live in every ocean, from warm, shallow tropical waters to near-freezing, abyssal depths. More remarkably,...
Octopuses rewrite their own genes to survive freezing temperatures
The California two-spot octopus (Bimaculoides) is the first octopus species to have its genome sequenced and is very helpful for studying cephalopods. Roger T. Hanlon Octopuses can do it all, from their signature...
A tracking device that uses animal movements as a power source
A team of zoologists, animal behaviorists and engineers from the Natural History Museum of Denmark, University of Copenhagen, the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and the Technical University of...
Researchers discover a new way to develop drugs without side effects
Have you ever wondered how drugs reach their targets and achieve their function within our bodies? If a drug molecule or a ligand is a message, an inbox is typically...
Team finds reliable predictor of plant species persistence, coexistence
Like many ecological scientists, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign plant biology professor James O'Dwyer has spent much of his career searching for ways to measure and predict how specific plant communities...
Researchers find structures that enable rapid transmission of nerve impulses in insects
An animal's brain consists of two different types of cell: neurons, which process and transmit information, and glial cells, which support the neurons in a variety of ways. In 1871,...
50 years ago, flesh-eating screwworms pushed scientists to mass produce flies
Fly factory planned for Mexico — Science News, June 2, 1973 A ‘fly factory’ whose product is living flies — 300 million of them every week — is to be built in...
In unusual orca sighting, tour spots at least 20 killer whales off San Francisco
An uncommonly large grouping of orcas for Northern California—roughly two dozen killer whales—were spotted by a whale watching tour off the coast of San Francisco last month, likely gathered together...
Ancient genomes show that the farming lifestyle in northwestern Africa was ignited by oversea-migrants from Iberia 7,400 years ago
A genomic analysis of ancient human remains from Morocco in northwest Africa revealed that food production was introduced by Neolithic European and Levantine migrants and then adopted by local groups.
Gradual supported release of primates into the wild shown to be effective
Gradually re-introducing primates into the wild with post-release support has, for the first time, been scientifically shown to improve their well-being.
Artificially modulating stomatal development may improve crop stress tolerance
Two MYB transcriptional regulators, FLP and its paralogous AtMYB88, redundantly regulate the symmetric division of guard mother cells and the abiotic stress response in Arabidopsis thaliana. Only one orthologue gene...