ScienceDaily: Plants & Animals News

Antarctic fish have adapted over millennia to survive in the freezing temperatures of the Southern Ocean. However, in doing so, they have lost their ability to grow at rates seen in their warmer water cousins, even when they are now held at the same water temperature, a new study suggests.

Climate change can affect life on Earth. According to new research, it can also affect the dead. A study of exceptionally preserved fossils has found that rising global temperatures and a rapidly changing climate 183 million years ago may have created fossilization conditions in the world's oceans that helped preserve the soft and delicate bodies of deceased marine animals.

Scientists develop a method to genetically label neurons with a single gene of interest in mice by combining the anterograde transsynaptic spread of adeno-associated virus serotype 1 (AAV1) with intersectional gene expression. In two distinct circuits: the retina/primary visual cortex to the superior colliculus and the bilateral motor cortex to the dorsal striatum, injections of AAV1 expressing either Cre or Flpo recombinases and the Cre/Flpo double-dependent AAV into two upstream regions and the downstream region, respectively, were used to label postsynaptic neurons receiving inputs from the two upstream regions.

A collaborative study has discovered a new immune checkpoint that may be exploited for cancer therapy. The study shows that by inhibiting the protein tyrosine phosphatase PTP1B in T cells, the body's immune response to cancer can be mobilized, helping to repress tumor growth.

The use of submersibles exponentially increased the recorded diversity of islands' deep-reef fish faunas.