A new discovery explains what determines the number and position of genetic exchanges that occur in sex cells, such as pollen and eggs in plants, or sperm and eggs in humans. When sex cells are produced by a special cell...
Manipulating RNA can allow plants to yield dramatically more crops, as well as increasing drought tolerance, announced a group of scientists from the University of Chicago, Peking University and Guizhou University. In initial tests, adding a gene encoding for a...
A study published Friday in the journal Science Advances shows that just a sliver of our genome is uniquely shared with other humans, and not shared by other extinct groups like Neanderthals and Denisovans What makes humans unique? Scientists have...
A near-perfectly preserved ancient human fossil known as the Harbin cranium sits in the Geoscience Museum in Hebei GEO University. The largest of Homo skulls, scientists now say this skull represents a newly discovered human species named Homo longi...
In a discovery that challenges long-held dogma in biology, researchers show that mammalian cells can convert RNA sequences back into DNA, a feat more common in viruses than eukaryotic cells. Cells contain machinery that duplicates DNA into a new set...
Only one in three fertilizations leads to a successful pregnancy. Many embryos fail to progress beyond early development. Cell biologists at the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen (Germany), together with researchers at the Institute of...
To observe the swift neuronal signals in a fish brain, scientists have started to use a technique called light-field microscopy, which makes it possible to image such fast biological processes in 3D. But the images are often lacking in...
The most comprehensive study of the family tree for legumes, the plant family that includes beans, soybeans, peanuts, and many other economically important crop plants, reveals a history of whole-genome duplications. The study also helps to uncover the evolution...
In the 150 years since Charles Darwin speculated that humans originated in Africa, the number of species in the human family tree has exploded, but so has the level of dispute concerning early human evolution. Fossil apes are often...
An international team of researchers led by Griffith University discovered the arrival of ancient humans to uninhabited islands doesn't always lead to widespread extinctions as is often thought. Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the research team examined...
For all animals, eliminating some cells is a necessary part of embryonic development. Living cells are also naturally sloughed off in mature tissues; for example, the lining of the intestine turns over every few days. One way that organisms get...