The rich levels of biodiversity on land seen across the globe today are not a recent phenomenon: diversity on land has been similar for at least the last 60 million years, since soon after the extinction of the...
Researchers at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have used one of the most advanced microscopes in the world to reveal the structure of a large protein complex crucial to photosynthesis, the process by which...
Proper development of the fetal penis requires not just testosterone from the testes, but a second hormone produced by other tissues, including the placenta, according to a new study publishing February 14 in the open-access journal PLOS Biology from...
Researchers have uncovered new evidence about the agriculturally important process of vernalization in a development that could help farmers deal with financially damaging weather fluctuations.
Vernalization is the process by which plants require prolonged exposure to cold temperature before they...
Research team studies the compelling connection between one of NIH's "most wanted" bacteria and mental health.
Researchers have established a correlation between depression and a group of neurotransmitter-producing bacteria found in the human gut.
The research team from the U.S. Department...
Nearly half of all insect species worldwide are in rapid decline and a third could disappear altogether, according to a study warning of dire consequences for crop pollination and natural food chains.
"Unless we change our way of producing food,...
Researchers at EMBL's European Bioinformatics Institute and the Wellcome Sanger Institute have identified almost 2000 bacterial species living in the human gut. These species are yet to be cultured in the lab. The team used a range of computational...
A building's architectural plans map out what's needed to keep it from falling down. But design is not just functional: often, it's also beautiful, with lines and shapes that can amaze and inspire.
Beautifully crafted architecture isn't limited to human-made...
MIT biologists have discovered the answer to a fundamental biological question: Why are cells of a given type all the same size?
In humans, cell size can vary more than 100-fold, ranging from tiny red blood cells to large neurons....
She weighs less than one ten-thousandth of an ounce and her top speed is less than two miles per hour. Nonetheless, the female mosquito is one of the most dangerous animals on the planet. For as she flies from...
Snakes and lizards are reptiles that belong to the order Squamata. They share several traits but differ in one obvious respect: Snakes do not have limbs. The two suborders diverged more than 100 million years ago. Identification of the...
