Belowground microbial solutions to aboveground plant problems
(Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research) Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research (MPIPZ) have discovered that signaling occurring from the response of plant leaves to light, and plant roots to microbes, is integrated along a microbiota-root-shoot axis to boost plant growth when light conditions are suboptimal. (Source: EurekAlert! - Biology)
Source: EurekAlert! - Biology - July 5, 2021 Category: Biology Source Type: news
Goldfinder: scientists discover why we can find gold at all
(Goldschmidt Conference) Why are gold deposits found at all? Gold is famously unreactive, and there seems to be little reason why gold should be concentrated, rather than uniformly scattered throughout the Earth's crust. Now an international group of geochemists have discovered why gold is concentrated alongside arsenic, explaining the formation of most gold deposits (Source: EurekAlert! - Biology)
Source: EurekAlert! - Biology - July 4, 2021 Category: Biology Source Type: news
The City of David and the sharks' teeth mystery
(Goldschmidt Conference) Scientists have found an unexplained cache of fossilised shark teeth in an area where there should be none - in a 2900 year old site in the City of David in Jerusalem. This is at least 80 km from where these fossils would be expected to be found. There is no conclusive proof of why the cache was assembled, but it may be that the 80 million-year-old teeth were part of a collection, dating from just after the death of King Solomon*. (Source: EurekAlert! - Biology)
Source: EurekAlert! - Biology - July 3, 2021 Category: Biology Source Type: news
Waste hop stem in the beer industry upcycled into cellulose nanofibers
(Yokohama National University) Some three quarters of the biomass in hop plants used in beer-making ends up in landfills. But a group of Japanese researchers has developed a technique that 'upcycles' that waste hop into cellulose nanofibers (CNFs). A paper describing the technique was published in the journal ACS Agricultural Science& Technology on June 11, 2021. (Source: EurekAlert! - Biology)
Source: EurekAlert! - Biology - July 2, 2021 Category: Biology Source Type: news
Solving a long-standing mystery about the desert's rock art canvas
(DOE/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory) Petroglyphs are carved in a material called rock varnish, the origins of which have been debated for years. Now, scientists argue it's the result of bacteria and an adaptation that protects them from the desert sun's harsh rays. (Source: EurekAlert! - Biology)
Source: EurekAlert! - Biology - July 2, 2021 Category: Biology Source Type: news
Unusual currents explain mysterious red crab strandings
(University of California - Santa Cruz) Researchers studied pelagic red crab range and strandings from 1950 to 2019 and compared these data with ocean conditions, like temperature and current movements. The team found that the appearance of red crabs outside of their normal range correlated with the amount of seawater flowing from Baja California to central California. (Source: EurekAlert! - Biology)
Source: EurekAlert! - Biology - July 2, 2021 Category: Biology Source Type: news
Scientists publish a how-to guide for creating mouse-human chimeric embryos
(University at Buffalo) A year after University at Buffalo scientists demonstrated that it was possible to produce millions of mature human cells in a mouse embryo, they have published a detailed description of the method so that other laboratories can do it, too. (Source: EurekAlert! - Biology)
Source: EurekAlert! - Biology - July 2, 2021 Category: Biology Source Type: news
Stanford research shows muskrats are a bellwether for a drying delta
(Stanford University) Downstream of hydroelectric dams and Alberta's oil sands, one of the world's largest freshwater deltas is drying out. New Stanford University research suggests long-term drying is making it harder for muskrats to recover from massive die-offs. It's a sign of threats to come for many other species. (Source: EurekAlert! - Biology)
Source: EurekAlert! - Biology - July 2, 2021 Category: Biology Source Type: news
Guadalupe fur seals continue to recover as new colony discovered
(University of British Columbia) Guadalupe fur seals (Arctocephalus townsendi) have established a large resting colony in the Gulf of California--bringing the total number of sites where this endangered species now occurs to just four. This new haul-out was discovered on El Farall ó n de San Ignacio Island, along the mainland coast of Mexico, according to researchers from Mexico and the University of British Columbia. (Source: EurekAlert! - Biology)
Source: EurekAlert! - Biology - July 2, 2021 Category: Biology Source Type: news
Novel strategy for natural product biosynthesis
(University of Freiburg) Researchers discover enzyme prototype for formation of ecologically and pharmaceutically important tropone compounds. (Source: EurekAlert! - Biology)
Source: EurekAlert! - Biology - July 2, 2021 Category: Biology Source Type: news
How ethane-consuming archaea pick up their favorite dish
(Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology) Hot vents in the deep sea are home to microbes that feed on ethane. They were discovered recently from scientists of the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology. Now the researchers from Bremen succeeded in finding an important component in the microbial conversion of the gas. They were able to decode the structure of the enzyme responsible for the ethane fixation. The results have now been published in the renowned journal Science. (Source: EurekAlert! - Biology)
Source: EurekAlert! - Biology - July 2, 2021 Category: Biology Source Type: news
The missing ocean plastic sink: Gone with the rivers
(University of Barcelona) Plastics are a growing problem for natural ecosystems around the globe, and in particular for marine and freshwater environments. Rivers are the leading source of plastic pollution, as it has been estimated that they deliver several million metric tons of plastic annually to oceans from poor land-based waste management. The estimates made for plastics flowing from the rivers are tens to hundreds of times higher than the quantity of plastics floating on the ocean's surface. (Source: EurekAlert! - Biology)
Source: EurekAlert! - Biology - July 2, 2021 Category: Biology Source Type: news
Three-in-one approach boosts the silencing power of CRISPR
(Nanjing Agricultural University The Academy of Science) The CRISPR-Cas9-based gene editing system has dramatically advanced the field of bioengineering. However, while fusing transcription activator or repressor to dCas9 protein allows targeted alteration of gene expression, the effect is short-term. Now, in a new study, scientists from the USA have developed a dCas9-based epigenetic editing tool that performs robust and long-term silencing of target genes. (Source: EurekAlert! - Biology)
Source: EurekAlert! - Biology - July 2, 2021 Category: Biology Source Type: news
Inside the lungs, a new hope for protection against flu damage
(Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciencia) The molecule, known as DAF, increases disease severity in mice upon infection with Influenza A virus, the most prevalent cause of the seasonal flu. Understanding this novel virulence mechanism of influenza and identifying the intrinsic factors that determine disease severity opens new possibilities for finding therapeutic targets for resilience to viral infections. (Source: EurekAlert! - Biology)
Source: EurekAlert! - Biology - July 2, 2021 Category: Biology Source Type: news
New insights into the assembly of photosynthetic membranes
(Ludwig-Maximilians-Universit ä t M ü nchen) An international study has elucidated the structure of a protein that is required for the assembly and stability of photosynthetic membranes. (Source: EurekAlert! - Biology)
Source: EurekAlert! - Biology - July 2, 2021 Category: Biology Source Type: news
