ScienceDaily: Plants & Animals News

Cavefish have obvious adaptations such as missing eyes and pale colors that demonstrate how they evolved over millennia in a dark, subterranean world. Now researchers say these incredible fish have an equally remarkable physiology that helps them cope with a low-oxygen environment that would kill other species.

Researchers reveal new details about a key enzyme that makes DNA sequencing possible. The finding is a leap forward into the era of personalized medicine when doctors will be able to design treatments based on the genomes of individual patients.

Briefly blocking a key molecule when administering the only approved vaccine for tuberculosis vastly improves long-term protection against the devastating disease in mice, researchers report.

Researchers have been able to re-engineer red blood cells and use them as a promising new vehicle for vaccine delivery.

New research shows that a bi-national regulation targeting ships entering the Great Lakes since the mid-2000s has been remarkably effective in reducing a large proportion of the invasive species in the world's largest freshwater ecosystem.

A tiny rodent trims tall grasses so it can watch the skies for flying predators, new research shows. Brandt’s voles live in grassland in Inner Mongolia, China, where they are hunted by birds called shrikes.

As wildfire season in the West grows in length and severity, it is taking a toll on the wine industry through the effects of wildfire smoke on the quality of wine grapes. Volatile compounds in the smoke from wildfires can be absorbed by grapes and produce an unpleasant taste known as 'smoke taint' in wines made from affected grapes. A new study provides valuable data and guidelines for using analytical chemistry to identify grapes and wines affected by smoke taint.

It is well known that methane, a greenhouse gas, is produced by special microorganisms, for example in the intestines of cows, or in rice fields. For some years, scientists had also observed the production of methane in plants and fungi, without finding an explanation. Now researchers have shed light on the underlying mechanism. Their findings suggest that all organisms release methane.

Algae such as rockweeds are a fundamental part of marine ecosystems, providing habitat and food to many other marine organisms while also providing ecosystem services like oxygenation of the water. In turn, algae depend on bacteria to maintain their normal shapes and health. New sequencing methods are illuminating the relationships between marine bacteria and marine algae, as demonstrated in research by 15 scientists from countries across the North Atlantic. The published study contributes to the understanding how sensitive important algae are to the changing environment.

Scientists describe the find of a new softshell turtle from the end of the Cretaceous Period.

The mechanisms suppressing nitrate assimilation in plants under nitrogen-repleted condition are poorly known, but researchers may have made a breakthrough. They have recently studied the transcription of nitrate assimilating genes in a unicellular red alga and found that deletion of the negative domain of transcription factor CmMYB1 or a previously unknown protein CmNDB1 is responsible for alleviation of the transcription of nitrate assimilating genes in nitrogen-repleted condition.

A luminescence reaction modeled on fireflies can detect contamination with organophosphates with high sensitivity, ease, and low cost. At the center of this technology is a new enzymatic method for the synthesis of analogues of luciferin, the substance that makes fireflies glow. As reported by a team of researchers, it could also be used in the field.

Scientists have discovered that a new form of ant society spread across species. They found that after the new form of society evolved in one species, a 'social supergene' carrying the instruction-set for the new social form spread into other species. This spread occurred through hybridization, i.e., breeding between ants of different species. This unlikely event provides an alternate way of life, making the ants more successful than if they only had the original social form.

Researchers have published a dataset that was recorded from the visual cortex of monkeys during the resting state. The dataset consists of electrophysiology data that was recorded from the visual cortex (V1 and V4) of two monkeys, from 1024 recording sites simultaneously during the resting state, and it also includes supporting datasets obtained while the monkeys performed visual tasks.

Ice cores allow climate researchers to look 800,000 years back in time: atmospheric carbon acts as fertilizer, increasing biological production. The mechanism removes carbon from the air and thereby dampens the acceleration in global warming.