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Category: Biology

A new idea for how to assemble life

A new idea for how to assemble life

Philip Ball writes: Assembly theory makes the seemingly uncontroversial assumption that complex objects arise from combining many simpler objects. The theory says it’s possible to objectively measure an object’s complexity by considering how it got made. That’s done by calculating the minimum number of steps needed to make the object from its ingredients, which is quantified as the assembly index (AI). In addition, for a complex object to be scientifically interesting, there has to be a lot of it. Very…

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Like hungry locusts, humans can easily be tricked into overeating

Like hungry locusts, humans can easily be tricked into overeating

Tim Vernimmen writes: This story starts in an unusual place for an article about human nutrition: a cramped, humid and hot room somewhere in the Zoology building of the University of Oxford in England, filled with a couple hundred migratory locusts, each in its own plastic box. It was there, in the late 1980s, that entomologists Stephen Simpson and David Raubenheimer began working together on a curious job: rearing these notoriously voracious insects, to try and find out whether they…

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How a human smell receptor works is finally revealed

How a human smell receptor works is finally revealed

Wynne Parry writes: For the first time, researchers have determined how a human olfactory receptor captures an airborne scent molecule, the pivotal chemical event that triggers our sense of smell. Whether it evokes roses or vanilla, cigarettes or gasoline, every scent starts with free-floating odor molecules that latch onto receptors in the nose. Multitudes of such unions produce the perception of the smells we love, loathe or tolerate. Researchers therefore want to know in granular detail how smell sensors detect…

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Just like humans, other apes enjoy spinning

Just like humans, other apes enjoy spinning

The New York Times reports: In 2011, a gorilla named Zola gained internet fame when the Calgary Zoo posted a video that showed him spinning in circles on his knuckles and heels with what appeared to be a huge grin on his face. Zola, the so-called break-dancing gorilla, returned in 2017, this time in a video showing him whirling around a kiddie pool with a level of wild enthusiasm rivaling the most committed human dancer at an all-night rave. Humans’…

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The sleeping beauties of biological evolution

The sleeping beauties of biological evolution

Andreas Wagner writes: What are the most successful organisms on the planet? Some people might think of apex predators like lions and great white sharks. For others, insects or bacteria might come to mind. But few would mention a family of plants that we see around us every day: grasses. Grasses meet at least two criteria for spectacular success. The first is abundance. Grasses cover the North American prairies, the African savannahs and the Eurasian steppes, which span 5,000 miles…

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‘Biological aging’ speeds up in times of great stress, but it can be reversed during recovery

‘Biological aging’ speeds up in times of great stress, but it can be reversed during recovery

Live Science reports: Our “biological age,” which reflects signs of age-related decline in our cells and tissues, doesn’t steadily increase along with our chronological age. Instead, new research suggests that biological aging can accelerate during stressful events and then reverse after those events. In other words, there are measurable biological markers linked to age-related changes in cell function, and these markers can appear in times of stress and then disappear during recovery. Scientists already knew that biological age’s relationship to…

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Cold temperatures seem to have a mysterious effect on longevity

Cold temperatures seem to have a mysterious effect on longevity

Science Alert reports: Lower temperatures might not warm your heart, but they could make for a longer life. Past research has proposed a few reasons behind this intriguing phenomenon. Now scientists from the University of Cologne in Germany have used experiments on worms to identify another possible reason: coldness drives a process through which damaged proteins are removed from cells. Several neurodegenerative diseases that can take hold as we get older – including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s – are linked to…

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Primitive Asgard cells show life on the brink of complexity

Primitive Asgard cells show life on the brink of complexity

Joshua Sokol writes: An oak tree. The symbiotic fungus intertwined with its roots. A cardinal chirping from one of its branches. Our best clue yet to their shared ancestor might have arrived in electron microscope images that were unveiled in December. “Look!” said the microbiologist Christa Schleper, beaming as she held a printed, high-resolution image in front of her webcam at the University of Vienna. “Isn’t it beautiful?” The cells in the micrograph were 500 nanometer-wide orbs surrounded by a…

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Giant study pinpoints specific gut bacteria linked to Alzheimer’s

Giant study pinpoints specific gut bacteria linked to Alzheimer’s

Science Alert reports: Tensions between the brain, the gut, and the makeup of its microbial inhabitants appear to play a critical role in the development of neurodegenerative conditions. While evidence favoring a link between the microbiota-gut-brain axis (MGBA) and Alzheimer’s disease continues to grow, the exact mechanism behind the relationship is still poorly understood. The puzzle pieces have so far been frustratingly incoherent, involving seemingly unrelated factors as tangled proteins inside nervous tissue to suspect gut microbes to subtle differences…

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The Ordovician mass extinction: Our planet’s first brush with death

The Ordovician mass extinction: Our planet’s first brush with death

Cody Cottier writes: Some mass extinctions unfold like a sloppy murder, leaving clear fingerprints for the keen investigator to uncover. (Asteroids are no masters of subtlety.) The Late Ordovician mass extinction, the oldest of all and the second most lethal, isn’t one of them. Though there is a standard explanation for this granddaddy of death — involving an ancient ice age — the evidence is cryptic enough that experts are still submitting new theories for how 85 percent of all…

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Global microbiome study gives new view of shared health risks

Global microbiome study gives new view of shared health risks

Yasemin Saplakoglu writes: Our bodies consist of about 30 trillion human cells, but they also host about 39 trillion microbial cells. These teeming communities of bacteria, viruses, protozoa and fungi in our guts, in our mouths, on our skin and elsewhere — collectively called the human microbiome — don’t only consist of freeloaders and lurking pathogens. Instead, as scientists increasingly appreciate, these microbes form ecosystems essential to our health. A growing body of research aims to understand how disruptions of…

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Unlocking secrets of the honeybee dance language – bees learn and culturally transmit their communication skills

Unlocking secrets of the honeybee dance language – bees learn and culturally transmit their communication skills

A honeybee is performing the waggle dance in the center of this photo to communicate the location of a rich nectar source to its nestmates. Heather Broccard-Bell, CC BY-ND By James C. Nieh, University of California, San Diego The Greek historian Herodotus reported over 2,000 years ago on a misguided forbidden experiment in which two children were prevented from hearing human speech so that a king could discover the true, unlearned language of human beings. Scientists now know that human…

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The evolutionary importance of slime

The evolutionary importance of slime

Susanne Wedlich writes: The weather in Morro Bay, California is too good, the coastline too picturesque, and the wildlife seem to have waltzed straight out of a Disney film. Sea otters play in the waves with their young, herons bask on the beach, and seals stretch their plump bellies in the sun. And yet amid the tranquility of Morro Bay lurks a monster straight from H.P. Lovecraft’s playbook, as slimy as a creature from Sartre’s nightmares. It doesn’t get much…

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Ancient proteins offer new clues about origin of life on Earth

Ancient proteins offer new clues about origin of life on Earth

Science Daily: By simulating early Earth conditions in the lab, researchers have found that without specific amino acids, ancient proteins would not have known how to evolve into everything alive on the planet today — including plants, animals, and humans. The findings, which detail how amino acids shaped the genetic code of ancient microorganisms, shed light on the mystery of how life began on Earth. “You see the same amino acids in every organism, from humans to bacteria to archaea,…

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Why life is not a thing but a restless manner of being

Why life is not a thing but a restless manner of being

Tim Requarth writes: Mike Russell found his moment of inspiration on a warm spring evening in Glasgow in 1983, when his 11-year-old son broke a new toy. The toy in question was a chemical garden, a small plastic tank in which stalagmite-like tendrils grew out of seed crystals placed in a mineral solution. Although the tendrils appeared solid from the outside, when shattered they revealed their true nature: each one was actually a network of hollow tubes, like bundles of…

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All living cells could have the molecular machinery for a magnetic ‘sixth sense’

All living cells could have the molecular machinery for a magnetic ‘sixth sense’

Science Alert reports: Every animal on Earth may house the molecular machinery to sense magnetic fields, even those organisms that don’t navigate or migrate using this mysterious ‘sixth sense’. Scientists working on fruit flies have now identified a ubiquitous molecule in all living cells that can respond to magnetic sensitivity if it is present in high enough amounts or if other molecules assist it. The new findings suggest that magnetoreception could be much more common in the animal kingdom than…

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