The degradation of the cell wall component pectin through the acquisition of an originally microbial enzyme provides access to the nutrient-rich constituents of plant cells.
In a sport where the finest of margins can determine the winner, a new study has shown that parental age can be a determining factor in who comes out on top in horse races.
Oxygen levels in the Earth’s atmosphere are likely to have “fluctuated wildly” one billion years ago, creating conditions that could have accelerated the development of early animal life, according to new research.
An evolutionary tree can be a tangled web, and a team of British scientists at the Milner Centre for Evolution at the University of Bath say that using anatomical comparisons to unravel those trees for organisms could prove to be misleading.
UT Austin researchers confirmed that the genetic control region they discovered only controls the expression of a sodium channel gene in muscle and no other tissues. In this image, a green fluorescent protein lights up only in trunk muscle in a developing zebrafish embryo. Image credit: Mary Swartz/Johann Eberhart/University of Texas at Austin.
For the first time since its discovery 130 years ago, one of the most mysterious fossil vertebrates finally has been classified, increasing our possible understanding of the first animals to crawl the Earth.
Where the human species is headed and whether humanity is still evolving are tantalizing questions for scientists who study evolution as well as for non-specialists.
In evolutionary terms what happens when a terrestrial organism adapts to a marine environment? The recent discovery of a unique fossil turtle provides an unusual example of one such organism in transition from land to sea.
An international team of researchers has developed a technique that uses liquid metal to create an elastic material that is impervious to both gases and liquids.
UVA Health researchers have developed an important new tool to help scientists sort signal from noise as they probe the genetic causes of cancer and other diseases.
The male reproductive system serves as a hotspot for the emergence of new genes.
Morgan Ruelle, M.S. ’10, Ph.D. ’15, was living in the remote mountains of Ethiopia in 2011, researching his dissertation on food diversity, when he kept hearing about a crop that confused him.
Scripps Oceanography researchers describe Pyrolycus jaco, a newly identified species of eelpout living in a hydrothermal seep in the deep ocean
How human beings developed the capacity for cognition has been a scientific topic of speculation for centuries.
Inspired by the biomechanics of the manta ray, researchers at North Carolina State University have developed an energy-efficient soft robot that can swim more than four times faster than previous swimming soft robots.
A new study finds the microbial ecosystem in the guts of wild marten (Martes americana) that live in relatively pristine natural habitat is distinct from the gut microbiome of wild marten that live in areas that are more heavily impacted by human activity.
A ground-breaking twist to the CRISPR tool – aka “genetic scissors” – is being put to use to edit plant genomes by scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology, signalling a methodology change.
Although most early dinosaurs were vegetarian, there were a surprising number of differences in the way that these animals tackled eating a plant-based diet,
A new study by Yale paleontologists charts the radical evolutionary changes to the thigh bones of dinosaurs and birds that allowed them to stand on two feet.
Faculty and graduate students participate in U.N. event, looking to contribute to the next set of innovations driving climate action