Physicist claims that life’s common trait is information
You are on one of those trips where the travel is so tedious that even your cell phone looks boring. Not being able to sleep, you look out…
Category: Biology
Flashlight Fish and their Glow-In-The-Dark Friends
Animals are unable to tell us why they do the things they do, and curious scientists often want to find out. They set up experiments to see…
Bacteria-Powered Battery Helps Remove Lake Pollution
Nitrogen pollution is a big problem in standing water such as lakes and ponds. The nitrogen comes from many sources, often agricultural…
Bacterial Cell Not as Simple as Previously Thought
When we first learn about cells in biology, we are taught that bacterial cells are simple, and animal and plant cells are more complex.…
Short, Tall, or Average: It’s in Your DNA
Genes are bundles of DNA that exist in your cells that affect how you look, grow, and age. Since the human genome was fully decoded in the…
Growing plants with colored light changes their nutrient content
Plants have five basic needs – food, water, air, light, and space. Outdoors, plants get everything they need from nature and some…
Grow High-Tunnel Lettuce Year Round on Fish Waste
A group of agricultural researchers at West Virginia University wanted to find out if it was possible to grow lettuce year round using high…
Resurrecting Ancient Proteins and Simulating Evolution in the Lab
How does a cell stay alive? How do molecules in a cell “know” how to react with one another? Does this chemistry become more…
Computer techniques allow scientists to understand how bacteria work together
Single celled prokaryotic microbes, such as bacteria and archaea, control almost every aspect of our daily lives, from our individual health…
An Expedition to Collect Fish in Africa for a Gene Archive
It was no ordinary fishing trip. In May 2011, Denis Tweddle, a research associate of the South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity…