126 results
- Microbes
Team spirit
Working together, bacteria and other microbes can accomplish much more than they can alone. Now scientists hope to harness that ability by engineering their own microbial consortia.
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Giardia Bares All: Parasite genes reveal long sexual history
Sexual reproduction started billions of years ago, as soon as life forms that have nuclei and organelles within their cells branched off from their structurally simpler ancestors.
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The tree of life, with tangled roots
Two ancient, rudimentary organisms merged to create the first complex cell, new data suggest.
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Gassing Up: Oxygen’s rise may have promoted complex life
The increasing amount of oxygen in Earth's atmosphere may have driven the emergence of complex life.
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Quite a Switch
Cells use ribonucleic acids that bind to small molecules such as vitamins to control gene activity.
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They’re Sequencing a What?
Announcements of new targets for genome sequencing are bringing celebrity to lesser-known twigs on the tree of life.
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19223
The July 8 story about “trilobite farming” states that “these trilobites would be the earliest creatures known to have forged a partnership with another species.” What about the fact that eukaryotes formed a partnership with other single-celled creatures that became mitochondria or chloroplasts? Now, if you mean that this was the first extracellular partnership, then […]
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A Rocky Start
A new origin-of-life theory holds that life began within the confines of iron sulfide rocks surrounding hydrothermal vents at the ocean bottom.
- Chemistry
Amending the Genetic Code: Yeast adds new amino acids to its proteins
Researchers have created yeast cells that add one of five unnatural amino acids to their natural 20-piece construction set.
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Bacterial genes and cell scaffolding
A bacterium may have revealed the origin of a key cell structure.
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Pass the Genes, Please
Gene swapping muddles the history of microbes.
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Small Wonder: Microbial hitchhiker has few genes
Scientists have identified a microbe with remarkably few genes living on another microbe on the ocean floor.
