ScienceDaily: Top Environment News

Among our closest living relatives -- the great apes -- we humans are unique: We have larger brains, reproduce more quickly and have longer life spans. These traits are obviously valuable, but the extra energy required to sustain them is quite significant. So how did we manage to afford them?

Using rapid plunge freezing and cryo-EM (electron microscopy) with computational methods, researchers have produced a comprehensive model of the yeast NPC (nuclear pore complex) which reveals the interconnected architecture of its core scaffold.

Genome sequencing is now much cheaper than it was, but still accounts for a large part of the costs in animal and plant breeding. One trick to reduce these costs is to sequence only a very small and randomly selected part of the genome and to complete the remaining gaps using mathematical and statistical techniques. Researchers have developed a new approach to do this.

A new study suggests that eating human food reduces microbial diversity in the guts of wild bears.

Radiant and flavorful, lychees were so beloved that they were domesticated not just once in ancient times, but independently in two different regions of China, a study finds.