ScienceDaily: Plants & Animals News

According to new research, the enzyme tokK helps synthesize a chain of methyl groups that allows potent antibiotics called carbapenems to circumvent antibiotic resistance.

Researchers wanted to know if different communities of microbes are making methane gas inside the soils or in the dead trees, which are also known as snags. They found that although the methane gas is generated in the soils, the trees act like filtering straws as the gas rises through the wood.

The Dog Aging Project, founded in 2018, is by far the most ambitious project tackling the question of canine longevity, enrolling and studying tens of thousands of dogs of all sizes, breeds and backgrounds to develop a thorough understanding of canine aging. Their open-source dataset will give veterinarians and scientists the tools to assess how well a specific dog is aging and will set the stage for further research into healthy aging -- in both dogs and people. One of their most intriguing avenues of inquiry will analyze the DNA of exceptionally long-lived dogs, the 'super-centenarians' of the dog world.

Physiologists have a furthered understanding of the bird neural circuitry that allows them to distinguish where a specific sound is coming from. Their findings could help scientists understand the basics of how mammalian brains compute the time difference between a single sound arriving at each individual ear, known as 'interaural time difference'. This ability is an integral component of sound localization.

Researchers describe a novel method for detecting viruses like Ebola virus (EBOV) and SARS CoV-2.

The function of an enzyme, critical to most forms of life, has been revealed.

Scientists from multiple universities now find there's more than one level of hummingbird torpor: shallow and deep, plus the transition stage between levels of torpor and the normal sleep state.

Data is not only the answer to numerous questions in the business world; the same applies to biomedical research. In order to develop new therapies or prevention strategies for diseases, scientists need more and better data, faster and faster. However, the quality is often very variable and the integration of different data sets often almost impossible.

Castalagin, a polyphenol from the Amazonian fruit camu-camu, increases the efficacy of immunotherapy in mice by modifying their microbiome, researchers find.

A new study unveils the prevalence of plastics in the entire water column of an offshore plastic accumulation zone in the southern Atlantic Ocean and implicates the ocean interior as a crucial pool of 'missing' plastics. Results show that small microplastics are critical, underexplored and integral to the oceanic plastic inventory. In addition, findings show that weak ocean current systems contribute to the formation of small microplastics hotspots at depth, suggesting a higher encounter rate for subsurface particle feeders like zooplankton.

A genome study to look for variants in a gene considered a fundamental building block for microscopic structures that synthesize proteins took a surprising twist.

A team of researchers has revealed the structure of a protein complex which is an important regulator of cellular degradation processes.

Climate change is causing plants in the UK to flower a month earlier on average, which could have profound consequences for wildlife, agriculture and gardeners.

A team of scientists has conducted promising early tests of a new strategy that might one day be used to prevent or treat type 2 diabetes. The scientists tested an experimental compound called IXA4 in obese mice. They showed that the compound activates a natural signaling pathway that protects the animals from harmful, obesity-driven metabolic changes that would normally lead to diabetes.

Limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees C above pre-industrial levels will still be catastrophic for coral reefs, new research suggests.  More than 90 percent of tropical coral reefs will suffer frequent heat stress -- their number one threat -- even under Paris Agreement climate warming limits.  The scale is even worse than predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which reported in 2018 that such a level would cause 70 percent to 90 percent of coral reefs to decline.

Researchers are calling for urgent investment in the prevention of a devastating emerging disease that kills tens of thousands of people each year. A global systematic review reports on the frequency of a range of serious complications and very high risk for death among patients with found non-typhoidal Salmonella invasive disease.

In the U.S., 52% of irrigated land is used for corn, soybean and winter wheat production. Corn and soybean are two of the country's most important crops, with 17% of corn production and 12% of soybean production coming from irrigated areas. However, the water used for this irrigation is often unsustainably pumped groundwater. Using groundwater sustainably for agriculture in the U.S. could dramatically reduce the production of corn, soybean and winter wheat.