The acceleration of global warming due to human activities has made the pace of tree evolution and adaptation a core concern of researchers and foresters. Researchers from INRAE, the ONF, the CEA and the universities of Uppsala (Sweden) and Zhejiang (China) studied the evolution of oak trees in three French forests over the last three centuries, from the cold period of the Little Ice Age to the warming caused by human activities. Their results, published on 6 January in Evolution Letters, show that oaks evolve rapidly and can adapt to climatic changes in just a few generations. According to these findings, forest managers should shorten generations and promote natural forest regeneration to facilitate rapid stand evolution.

A remarkable link between the number of nearby exploding stars, called supernovae and life on Earths has been discovered.

A new study from U-M researchers, published in the journal Science Advances, lends further support to the emerging notion that bacteria employ genetic silencing to protect themselves from harmful mutations.

Researchers from the University of Louisville School of Dentistry and their colleagues have discovered details of how proteins produced by oral epithelial cells protect humans against viruses entering the body through the mouth. They also found that oral bacteria can suppress the activity of these cells, increasing vulnerability to infection.

The first comprehensive analysis of viral horizontal gene transfer (HGT) illustrates the extent to which viruses pick up genes from their hosts to hone their infection process, while at the same time hosts also co-opt useful viral genes.

For more than a hundred years it was surmised that each neuron is characterized by a unique, short resting time of approximately two to three milliseconds after the spike occurred, in which the neuron cannot re-generate a consecutive spike. This resting period is followed by a longer period of stutter neuronal responses until full responsiveness is achieved. In a new article published in the journal Physical Review E, a group of researchers led by Bar-Ilan University in Israel challenge conventional wisdom by highlighting three new features they've experimentally discovered about neuronal refractory (resting) periods.