All Ecology & Evolution articles – Page 6
-
News
Study solves mystery behind bacteria’s extensive weaponry
A new study has shed light on why certain species of bacteria carry astonishing arsenals of weapons. The findings could help us to engineer microbes that can destroy deadly pathogens, reducing our reliance on antibiotics.
-
News
Plants that survived dinosaur extinction aided by microbes to pull nitrogen from air
Scientists have found that the cycad species that survived extinction relied on symbiotic bacteria in their roots, which provide them with nitrogen to grow.
-
News
Bacteria store memories and pass them on for generations
Scientists have discovered that bacteria can create something like memories about when to form strategies that can cause dangerous infections in people, such as resistance to antibiotics and bacterial swarms.
-
News
How green algae count cell divisions reveals key step needed for multicellular life
Scientists have made an unexpected discovery of a biased counting mechanism used by the single-celled green alga Chlamydomonas to control cell division.
-
News
Recreation of ancient seawater reveals which nutrients shaped the evolution of early life
Scientists know very little about conditions in the ocean when life first evolved, but new research published in Nature Geoscience has revealed how geological processes controlled which nutrients were available to fuel their development. All life uses nutrients such as zinc and copper to form proteins. The ...
-
News
Longstanding mystery of phosphite solved with help of sewage plant
Biologists have discovered a phosphorus-based bacterial metabolism that is both new and ancient, thanks to a calculation from the 1980s, a sewage plant, a new bacterial organism, and a remnant from around 2.5 billion years ago.
-
News
Bacteria-virus arms race provides rare window into rapid and complex evolution
Researchers documenting rapid evolutionary processes in simple laboratory flasks show that intricate ecological networks emerge from simple beginnings that feature repeating patterns of evolutionary development.
-
News
New model shows bacterial chase-and-evade activities can form higher pattern
A new model demonstrates that chasing interactions can induce dynamical patterns in the organization of bacterial species.
-
News
Antiviral drug linked to SARS-CoV-2 mutations
Researchers have uncovered a link between an antiviral drug for COVID-19 infections called molnupiravir and a pattern of mutations in the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
-
News
Majority rule in complex mixtures
Göttingen University researchers use mathematical model to identify new mechanism for control of phase separation.
-
News
Algae provide clues about 600 million years of plant evolution
Research team led by Göttingen University investigates 10 billion RNA snippets to identify ’hub genes’.
-
News
Some hosts have an ‘evolutionary addiction’ to their microbiome
Microbes might not actually be helping their hosts; instead, microbe-free hosts might malfunction because they have evolved an addiction to their microbes, says one evolutionary ecologist.
-
News
Shell-building strategies could be key in climate models
A scientist investigating how single-celled organisms discovered how to build a ‘shell’ around their single cell says it could help predict how the calcium balance in the oceans will change under the influence of the changing climate.
-
News
Host-to-host microbe transmission impacts bacterial evolution in the gut
A new study uncovers a significant role for bacterial transmission across hosts in shaping the adaptive evolution of new strains that colonize gut microbiomes.
-
News
Scientists reveal how microalgae cope with environmental challenges
A study has shed new light on the intricate relationship between competition, evolution, and ecological communities in microalgae.
-
News
Multicellular life on Earth ‘didn’t arise as described in textbooks’
Oxygen didn’t catalyze the swift blossoming of Earth’s first multicellular organisms, a new study says, defying a 70-year-old assumption about what caused an explosion of oceanic fauna hundreds of millions of years ago.
-
News
Artificial cells show that ‘life finds a way’
Scientists studying a synthetically constructed minimal cell that has been stripped of all but its essential genes have found it can evolve just as fast as a normal cell.
-
News
Complex life descended from common Asgardian ancestor
Researchers analyzing the genomes of hundreds of different archaea have discovered that eukaryotes trace their roots to a common Asgard archaean ancestor.
-
News
Mapping evolution of E. coli virulence factor offers refined drug target
Researchers have presented evidence that targeting the K1 capsule can be used as the basis of treatment, paving the way to prevent serious E. coli infections.
-
News
Ancestral mitoviruses discovered in mycorrhizal fungi
A new group of mitochondrial viruses confined to the arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi Glomeromycotina may represent an ancestral lineage of mitoviruses.