Molecular mechanisms that trigger flowering in spring
...of other genes that trigger flowering. However, in darkness these photoreceptors are not activated, and CONSTANS protein is attached to a small protein called ubiquitin, which marks it for degradation by the proteasome. Thus in short days, although CONSTANS mRNA is present, the protein is absent. The expressi...... vegetation month by month. They depict a world in darkness where the fungi had taken over. Its known that an asteroid hit the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico at the end of the Cretaceous Period. It left a 180 km wide crater and from the impact site tsunamis developed and the Caribbean region was buried in ash an...Antarctic fish study may aid cardiac research
...on what animals get up to during the impending 24h darkness of a polar winter, how sensitive they are likely to be to climate change, and perhaps pave the way to understanding how we may prevent a cold heart from fluttering. We know enough to realise this 'cod' is different from those species living in the ch...How do animals exposed to 24-hour light retain their wake-sleep habits?
...by months of full light followed by months of full darkness -- retain their sleep and awake habits in such un...s daylight in the summer and 82 days of continuous darkness in the winter, a team of researchers may have begun to identify a clue. A New Study The research i...Corals can reestablish symbiosis with algae from their environments after bleaching
... rod common to Caribbean reefs) by keeping them in darkness in the laboratory. After 12 weeks of darkness, cell densities of symbionts in the coral had plunged to less than one percent of their population density when the corals were healthy. During the six weeks following 'bleaching,' the cor...Despite darkness, nocturnal bees learn visual landmarks while foraging at night
... to adopt a nocturnal lifestyle, with the cover of darkness allowing them to exploit food resources in relativ...ta genalis--have become nocturnal, and despite the darkness and their apparently insensitive compound eyes, they have retained remarkable visual abilities. In t......cles that are naturally shorter than 24 hours, and darkness serves as a stimulus for resetting the circadian clock (such stimuli are referred to as Zeitgeber mechanisms, from the German word meaning "time-giver"). Their analysis of expression levels at this critical Zeitgeber hour 12 produced estimated body t...Testing the fitness of biological clocks
...shutting down photosynthesis in expectation of the darkness that never comes," says Johnson....New hydrothermal vents discovered as 'South Pacific Odyssey' research begins
...nails and other strange animals that live in total darkness off of the hot, acidic vent water. Many scientists have dubbed the basin "the perfect geologic experiment," an ideal place to study the processes that connect Earth's deep interior to ocean ridge volcanoes and the biological communities they support......orn - must have the ability to transition from the darkness of an underground environment to life above ground. "The development of seed burial in plants provided a long-term survival benefit through protection from predators and hostile surface conditions," said Quail. "The true test of our hypot...