Through the eyes of animals
Reading Time: < 1 minutePHD candidate Cedric van den Berg from UQ’s School of Biological Sciences said that, until now, it has been difficult to understand how animals really saw the world. “Most animals have completely different visual systems to humans, so — for many species — it is unclear how they see complex visual information or colour patterns […]
Lab-evolved bacteria consume C02
Reading Time: < 1 minuteOVER the course of several months, researchers in Israel created Escherichia coli strains that consume CO2 for energy instead of organic compounds. This achievement in synthetic biology highlights the incredible plasticity of bacterial metabolism and could provide the framework for future carbon-neutral bioproduction. The work appears in the Nov 27th issue of the journal Cell.
South Australia a step closer to lifting GM ban
Reading Time: 2 minutesTHE State Government of South Australia (SA) has introduced a legislation to finally lift the GM crop ban in mainland SA. The ban was supposed to take effect on December 1 but was met with challenges last week causing the delay. Parliament will be working on the Bill this week to make sure that SA […]
Mystery of how early animals survived ice age
Reading Time: 2 minutesHOW did life survive the most severe ice age? A McGill University-led research team has found the first direct evidence that glacial meltwater provided a crucial lifeline to eukaryotes during Snowball Earth, when the oceans were cut off from life-giving oxygen, answering a question puzzling scientists for years. In a new study published in the […]
Study: Ancient Egyptians sacrificed birds for mummification
Reading Time: 2 minutesIN ancient Egypt, Sacred Ibises were collected from their natural habitats to be ritually sacrificed, according to a study released Nov 13, 2019 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Sally Wasef of Griffith University, Australia and colleagues. Egyptian catacombs are famously filled with the mummified bodies of Sacred Ibises. Between around 664BC and 250AD, […]
Amazon fires indicate abnormal 2019 summer
Reading Time: 2 minutesTHE fires that raged across the Brazilian Amazon this summer were not ‘normal’ and large increases in deforestation could explain why, scientists show. The perceived scale of the Amazon blazes received global attention this summer. However, international concerns raised at the time were countered by the Brazilian Government, which claimed the fire situation in August […]
Commercial sugarcane sequenced
Reading Time: < 1 minuteAn international group of researchers led by scientists from Brazil’s Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP) has assembled the most complete genome sequence of commercial sugarcane, mapping 373,869 genes, equivalent to 99.1% of the total genome. The group sequenced the variety SP80-3280, one of the top 20 sugarcane varieties grown […]
Using fungi to search for medical drugs
Reading Time: 2 minutesAN ENORMOUS library of products derived from more than ten thousand fungi could help us find new drugs. Researchers from the group of Jeroen den Hertog at the Hubrecht Institute, in collaboration with researchers from the Westerdijk Institute and Utrecht University, have set up this library and screened it for biologically active compounds. They tested […]
Finnish rivers move carbon to Baltic Sea at rapid speed
Reading Time: < 1 minuteTHE AMOUNT of carbon transported via Finnish rivers to the Baltic Sea has risen substantially in the past few decades. This was found in a collaborative study by the University of Helsinki, Aarhus University and the Finnish Environment Institute. The researchers don’t know the exact effects yet. The researchers investigated changes in the amount of […]
Rats are more social than we thought
Reading Time: < 1 minuteRATS are amazing at avoiding dangers. What is their secret? Could empathy be a contributing factor? Or is this too far-fetched? This is what a group of researchers from the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience tried to investigate. Their study, to be published on December 5th in PLoS Biology, shows that rats can use other rats […]