Family trees of ancient bacteria reveal evolutionary moves
...redated more complex organisms like multi-cellular plants and functioned in a world where the oxygen level of the biosphere was much less than it is today. Over their very long life span, Cyanobacteria have evolved a system to survive a gradually increasing oxidizing environment, making them of interest to...New system can measure productivity of oceans
...in the late 1800s that we even realized these tiny plants formed the base of the marine food web," Behrenfeld said. "By the 1950s, we had figured out how to accurately measure their production and use observations of chlorophyll to determine their biomass. But until now, we've never been able to measure the...New RNA polymerase discovered in plants
...e discovered an entirely new cellular "machine" in plants that plays a significant role in plant flowering a...ered a fourth kind of RNA polymerase found only in plants and speculated to have been a plant feature for more than 200 million years. RNA polymerase is an ...Scientists propose new approach to estimating global ocean productivity
ORONO, Maine - Tiny marine plants known as phytoplankton provide clues to the health...ns produce as much or more chlorophyll per cell as plants growing in full sunlight, says Boss. However, plants need nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus,...NASA announces breakthrough in understanding ocean health
...ans through studying information about tiny marine plants called phytoplankton. Phytoplankton has a key role in fisheries, harmful algal blooms, and carbon dioxide uptake by oceans....Lychnis moth (Hadena bicruris) lays more eggs in isolated areas
...lead to less caterpillars dying, and therefore the plants being attacked more. Elzinga discovered that the white campion was indeed attacked more in small and isolated growing areas. He also found that in such areas, fewer caterpillars were attacked by ichneumon flies and fewer ichneumon fly species were pr...Scientists document complex genomic events leading to the birth of new genes
...nimal genomes but not in other eukaryotes, such as plants or fungi. The new gene family characterized by Dr. Bork and his colleagues was largely derived from RanPB2, but it had also acquired a domain from the neighboring GCC2 gene, whose protein product contains a GRIP domain that localizes intracellularly ...Assumptions of effects of rising carbon dioxide probed
... of plants, are considered a beneficial partner to plants helping them cope with natural stresses, such as low soil fertility, drought and temperature extremes. The fungi were exposed to either an abrupt or gradual increase in this atmospheric gas. The group exposed to a slow rise in CO2 concentration sho...Charles Yanofsky named National Medal of Science winner
... orchids by presenting him with the first blooming plants of a new orchid variety, bred and officially registered in his honor as the ''Charley Yanofsky.'' Yanofsky is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society of London. He has received the...Amino acids in nectar enhance butterfly fecundity: A long awaited link
...to visit and successfully pollinate their flowers, plants have evolved intriguing mechanisms and attractants, of which nectar is best known. Thirty years ago, researchers discovered that nectars of flowers pollinated by butterflies contain substantial amounts of amino acids. Recent experiments have shown t...Stockpile bird flu vaccine now
...Because these vaccines have been made at different plants using different production methods they must be tested separately. No European governments have pledged funding for clinical trials even though most of the world's flu vaccine is made in Europe. Not everybody is convinced that spending money on test...Marine seaweed can detoxify organic pollutants
...ent uptake mechanism than even terrestrial aquatic plants to at least neutralize organic pollutants." The r...en demonstrated. It's unclear yet whether similar plants can be identified, the researchers said, that will perform this function in terrestrial fresh waters...Plants become green Mr. Clean to combat toxic messes
...ext big way to clean up toxic sites may be coaxing plants to become janitors, a Michigan State University sc...il sciences, explains that phytoremediation using plants to remove contaminants from the soil is evolving. In the early stages of this technology, plants w...... largely dominated by open water, and vegetated by plants like our common reed plant. You've probably seen these big, tall grass-like plants in ditches along the roadside here in Ontario. It's a form of that species, except that it's about t...Scientists find both damage and promise for renewal in devastated Iraqi marshlands
...was funded to conduct studies of the soils, water, plants and animals in the region. Now, only 10 percent of the original marshes survived as "fully functioning wetlands" following extensive drainage and upstream agricultural irrigation on the Tigris and Euphrates during Saddam's rule, said a report authore...... between the sexes. By analyzing a dataset of 107 plants and animals, they showed that the opportunity for selection to act on a gamete can influence the rate of recombination. For example, in some plants, such as pines, where females have lower recombination rates than males, the female gametes can experi...Ecological destruction fuels emerging diseases
...TBI is documenting an estimated 250,000 species of plants and animals, including everything from viruses to jaguars. For his part, Dr. Brooks has looked for parasites in more than 4,000 individuals from species ranging from frogs to deer. So far, he has found more than 5,000 different types of these often ...Plants respond similarly to signals from friends, enemies
... to popular belief, the root-knot nematode signals plants from a distance and therefore does not need to att...sponse. When the researchers studied L. japonicus plants missing the receptors that receive signals from other organisms certain genes in the plant were mod...Inflammatory molecules released by pollen trigger allergies
...al allergy-promoting immune response. Pollen from plants exposed to air pollutants produce more of these allergy-provoking compounds than do pollen from unpolluted areas, possibly explaining why allergies are more prevalent in places with high levels of car exhaust emissions. Traidl-Hoffmann and colleagues......process eventually may allow researchers to design plants better able to protect themselves from insects and...ertain structures in a cell are positioned and how plants respond to gravity and light. Szymanski's team used a deformed version of a common research plant, A...