ScienceDaily: Plants & Animals News

An international team of researchers from biology, computer science and mathematics explains why evolution has a preference for symmetry.

Around 2.3 billion years ago, oxygen began building up in the atmosphere, eventually reaching the life-sustaining levels we breathe today. A new hypothesis suggests a mechanism for how this may have happened.

Researchers have found that D-serine, the structural mirror image of L-serine, regulates tissue migration in the marine organism Ciona during its juvenile-to-adult transformation. D-serine binds to NMDAR, leading to the formation and release of a vesicle that assists in tail regression in Ciona. This finding provides the first description of a biological function of a D-amino acid in a non-mammal chordate, elucidating vesicle release mechanisms in organisms other than mammals.

A genetic cause of albinism, or loss of pigmentation, in the small kangaroo-like wallaby has been explored. Researchers examined the gene for the enzyme tyrosinase or TYR, known for its role in producing melanin, the natural skin pigment. In the TYR gene, they discovered that an extra DNA fragment led to albinism.