For over a century, scientists have wrestled with one of biology’s most fundamental mysteries: how the first animals evolved.
Category: biological
Bioart emerges where biological science, technology, and aesthetics collide. For one terminally ill artist, it offered a chance at immortality.
Swiss scientists have created a new plastic-like material that’s flexible, biodegradable, and even edible. The secret? It’s still alive.
The material, which was created by a team from Empa in Switzerland, manages to balance biodegradability with toughness and versatility – a feat that is far from easy in materials science.
The researchers processed fibers from the mycelium (the root-like part) of the split-gill mushroom (Schizophyllum commune) into a liquid mixture, without actually killing them off or destroying their natural biological functions.
Memory is strange. It sharpens, fades, twists, and sometimes misleads. These seven recent studies uncover how emotion, stress, and biology shape what we remember—and what we forget.
Circulate Health and Buck researchers find that TPE combined with immunoglobulin reduced biological age by more than 2.5 years on average.
So-called “ultraweak photon emission” could provide a new tool for studying living organisms.
Being cut off in traffic, giving a presentation or missing a meal can all trigger a suite of physiological changes that allow the body to react swiftly to stress or starvation. Critical to this “fight-or-flight” or stress response is a molecular cycle that results in the activation of protein kinase A (PKA), a protein involved in everything from metabolism to memory formation. Now, a study by researchers at Penn State has revealed how this cycle resets between stressful events, so the body is prepared to take on new challenges.
The details of this reset mechanism, uncovered through a combination of imaging, structural and biochemical techniques, are published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
“Some of the early changes in the fight-or-flight response include the release of hormones, like adrenaline from stress or glucagon from starvation,” said Ganesh Anand, associate professor of chemistry and of biochemistry and molecular biology in the Penn State Eberly College of Science and lead author of the paper.
A new study, led by San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, Smithsonian’s National Zoo & Conservation Biology Institute, and additional researchers, offers a unique lens for understanding the unprecedented extinction crisis of native Hawaiian forest birds.
Just 17 out of approximately 60 species of the iconic honeycreeper remain, most of which are facing rapid decline due to avian malaria. The findings, published in Current Biology, include new evidence that there is still time to save the critically endangered honeycreeper ‘akeke’e—but the window is rapidly closing.
“In a race against time to save the remaining honeycreepers, necessary insights about their survival are found in their genetic makeup,” said Christopher Kyriazis, Ph.D., lead author and postdoctoral researcher from San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance. “Our findings provide a new understanding of the last remaining individuals as recovery efforts forge on in their native forests and in human care.”
The new algorithm, Pinal, is just the latest in a growing family of algorithms that can translate English text into new proteins.
Participants taking 2,000 IU of vitamin D daily had significantly less telomere loss over four years, study finds.