Study examines the effects of ocean acidification on phytoplankton’s energy stores
Peer-Reviewed Publication
Ocean acidification—which is mainly caused by carbon dioxide gas in the atmosphere dissolving into the ocean—is a significant threat to the structure and function of marine life. In a study published in the New Phytologist, investigators have uncovered the different effects that ocean acidification has on the energy stores of phytoplankton (single-celled plants that are critical to the aquatic food chain) called diatoms.
At the largest winter monarch aggregation in central Mexico, scientists have observed that rodents attack monarchs that fall to the ground. For the first time, biologists working at Pismo State Beach, CA, discovered that the western harvest mouse also ate grounded monarchs. Documenting this new feeding behavior is a reminder of little we know about the interactions that may be lost as insect populations decline.
Researchers at Gladstone Institutes have fine-tuned an additional system for more efficient gene editing, using molecules called retrons. The group reported in the journal Nature Chemical Biology that retrons can be optimized for efficiency and used to edit genes in a variety of cell types, from fungi to human cells.
Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers have developed a color-coded test that quickly signals whether newly developed nanoparticles — ultra small compartments designed to ferry medicines, vaccines and other therapies — deliver their cargo into target cells. Historically, nanoparticles have a very low delivery rate to the cytosol, the inside compartment of cells, releasing only about 1%–2% of their contents. The new testing tool, engineered specifically to test nanoparticles, could advance the search for next-generation biological medicines. The technology builds upon nanoparticles currently used against cancer and eye disease, and in vaccines for viruses including SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
A reexamination of Earth's famous "whiff of oxygen" has the potential to rewrite early accounts of the planet's history by finding that atmospheric oxygen actually did not exist prior to the Great Oxygenation Event (GOE).
A new UCSF study that mapped the neural connections of newborns with two different kinds of brain injuries found the maps looked very different—and were linked to significantly different developmental outcomes years later.
Very few proteins in the body have a change that makes them unique compared to the corresponding proteins in Neanderthals and apes. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany and Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have now studied one such protein, glutathione reductase, which protects against oxidative stress. They show that the risk for inflammatory bowel disease and vascular disease is increased several times in people carrying the Neanderthal variant.