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Category: Biology

How rare and vulnerable our temperate moment is

How rare and vulnerable our temperate moment is

Peter Brannen writes: Some 4 billion years after its creation, a small planet circling an unexceptional star in the outlying Orion-Cygnus spiral arm of the Milky Way enjoyed a brief and bustling season of complex life. The planet blushed with a breathable atmosphere, and for a few hundred million years it also hosted temperatures that somehow stayed within a surprisingly narrow window — one amenable to a biosphere that now teemed with energetic, multicellular creatures. For its entire prior history,…

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The discovery of aeonophiles expands our definition of life

The discovery of aeonophiles expands our definition of life

Karen G Lloyd writes: If you had to nominate the slowest, longest-living organisms on Earth, what would you picture? Among the vertebrates, some people might think of tortoises, whales or perhaps more obscure creatures like the Greenland shark, which can live for centuries. Others might imagine coral colonies, or perhaps an ancient tree: there are oaks in England that could be more than 1,000 years old, whereas in California, a few Bristlecone pines have been around for millennia, dating to…

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The truth that physics can no longer ignore

The truth that physics can no longer ignore

Adam Frank writes: On October 8, 2024, the field of physics was plunged into controversy. That day, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded for discoveries not involving black holes, cosmology, or strange new subatomic particles, but about AI. How could the discipline’s highest award go to research about machines designed to mimic human brains? Where was the physics in that? For most of the 20th century, physicists largely ignored living systems. They understood living things as machines, albeit ones…

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Rewilded lab mice, lose their anxiety after a week outdoors

Rewilded lab mice, lose their anxiety after a week outdoors

Cornell University: When postdoctoral researcher Matthew Zipple releases lab mice into a large, enclosed field just off Cornell’s campus, something remarkable happens. The mice, which have only ever lived in a cage a little larger than a shoebox, rear up on their back legs, sniff the air, move into the grass and begin to bound over it, a new way of moving and a totally new experience for them. It’s one of many they’ll have as “rewilded” mice, and in…

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Humans have an internal lunar clock. We are accidentally destroying it

Humans have an internal lunar clock. We are accidentally destroying it

PsyPost reports: Most animals, including humans, carry an internal lunar clock, tuned to the 29.5-day rhythm of the Moon. It guides sleep, reproduction and migration of many species. But in the age of artificial light, that ancient signal is fading – washed out by the glow of cities, screens and satellites. Just as the circadian rhythm keeps time with the 24-hour rotation of the Earth, many organisms also track the slower rhythm of the Moon. Both systems rely on light…

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Long-term calorie restriction in diet may slow biological aging in the brain

Long-term calorie restriction in diet may slow biological aging in the brain

PsyPost reports: A new study suggests that restricting calorie intake over a lifetime may slow the biological aging of support cells in the primate brain. The research provides evidence that a thirty percent reduction in calories preserves the metabolic function of cells responsible for insulating nerve fibers. These findings were published in the journal Aging Cell. The brain relies on complex networks of communication to function correctly. This communication depends heavily on white matter, which consists of nerve fibers coated…

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A cell that lacks any metabolic genes is a new addition to the spectrum of life

A cell that lacks any metabolic genes is a new addition to the spectrum of life

Jake Buehler writes: Life’s fundamental structure is the cell, and so the main things that a cell does — processing biomolecules, growing, replicating its genetic material and producing a new body — are considered hallmarks of life. But earlier this year, scientists discovered a cell so severely stripped of essential functions that it challenges biologists’ definitions of what counts as a living thing. The species is a single-celled organism known only by the mysterious sequence of its genetic code. Its…

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Are plants intelligent? It depends on how you define it

Are plants intelligent? It depends on how you define it

Avery Elizabeth Hurt writes: It’s a pleasant summer morning. Across a field, a line of poplar trees sways in the breeze. Insects buzz and flit among the branches. Everything seems calm and peaceful. But don’t be fooled. These trees are actually under attack as hungry insects chomp on their leaves. The trees can’t hide, and they can’t run away. But they aren’t helpless: They have ways to fight back — and even aid each other. As soon as an insect…

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James Watson: Titan of science with tragic flaws

James Watson: Titan of science with tragic flaws

Jon Cohen writes: “It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material.” That famous understatement concludes the 1953 Nature article in which James Watson, then just 25, and Francis Crick announced their discovery of the double helical structure of DNA. In his later life, Watson, who died on 6 November at 97, was anything but understated. The son of a Chicago bill collector, Watson shared a…

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Humans have an internal lunar clock – but light pollution is disrupting it

Humans have an internal lunar clock – but light pollution is disrupting it

Flash Vector/Shutterstock By Stefano Arlaud, Queen Mary University of London Most animals, including humans, carry an internal lunar clock, tuned to the 29.5-day rhythm of the Moon. It guides sleep, reproduction and migration of many species. But in the age of artificial light, that ancient signal is fading – washed out by the glow of cities, screens and satellites. Just as the circadian rhythm keeps time with the 24-hour rotation of the Earth, many organisms also track the slower rhythm…

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Between sleep and awareness are many types of liminal states

Between sleep and awareness are many types of liminal states

Yasemin Saplakoglu writes: The pillow is cold against your cheek. Your upstairs neighbor creaks across the ceiling. You close your eyes; shadows and light dance across your vision. A cat sniffs at a piece of cheese. Dots fall into a lake. All this feels very normal and fine, even though you don’t own a cat and you’re nowhere near a lake. You’ve started your journey into sleep, the cryptic state that you and most other animals need in some form…

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What is sleep?

What is sleep?

Vladyslav Vyazovskiy writes: After decades of research, there is still no clearly articulated scientific consensus on what sleep is or why it exists. Yet whenever sleep comes up as a topic of discussion, it is quickly reduced to its necessity and importance. Popular media remind us of what can, and will, go wrong if we do not sleep enough, and serve up some handy tips on how to overcome insomnia. Discussed exclusively in utilitarian terms, we are force-fed the idea…

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Genes harness physics to help grow living things

Genes harness physics to help grow living things

Anna Demming writes: Sip a glass of wine, and you will notice liquid continuously weeping down the wetted side of the glass. In 1855, James Thomson, brother of Lord Kelvin, explained in the Philosophical Magazine that these wine “tears” or “legs” result from the difference in surface tension between alcohol and water. “This fact affords an explanation of several very curious motions,” Thomson wrote. Little did he realize that the same effect, later named the Marangoni effect, might also shape…

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The surprising recovery of once-rare birds

The surprising recovery of once-rare birds

Sandhill cranes can be spotted in many states, but in the 1930s their populations had crashed to a few dozen breeding pairs in the eastern U.S. Rsocol/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY By Tom Langen, Clarkson University When I started bird-watching as a teenager, a few years after the first Earth Day in 1970, several species that once thrived in my region were nowhere to be found. Some, like the passenger pigeon, were extinct. Others had retreated to more remote, wild areas…

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Just like humans, parrots can learn new tricks by imitating their peers

Just like humans, parrots can learn new tricks by imitating their peers

GrrlScientist writes: A recently published study reports that parrots can learn new tricks simply by observing their peers performing the desired behavior in response to a physical cue from a human. The study, by an international group of scientists, discovered that this method of learning – known as third-party imitation – is not exclusive to humans as was widely thought, and could help explain the subtleties of parrot culture and social interactions. Third-party imitation is a social learning trait associated…

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Tiny tubes in primitive Asgard archea may have been the precursor of our own cellular skeletons

Tiny tubes in primitive Asgard archea may have been the precursor of our own cellular skeletons

Veronique Greenwood writes: In 2010, biologists made a shocking discovery. Living in the mud of the North Sea were microorganisms whose genes looked a lot like ours. Genetic analysis revealed that humans, oak trees, blue whales — any living things whose cells have nuclei and mitochondria — are related to these microbes, which were named the Asgard archaea after the home of the Norse gods. Two billion years ago, it was an ancestor of an Asgard that diverged from its…

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