Tag Archives: researchers

  Humans have been grafting plants onto other plants for thousands of years, but only in the last few generations have we understood the genetic implications of the technique. Researchers from Penn State and the University of Florida partnered with a Nebraska startup to combine genetically “stressed” roots with regular …

An international team of scientists has sequenced and analyzed the entire nuclear genome of the scimitar-toothed cat Homotherium latidens. Their results demonstrate that this extinct species was highly divergent from all living cat species and did not undergo any detectable gene flow with living cat species after their initial diversification …

An international team of scientists from China, Taiwan and the United States has successfully sequenced and analyzed the genomes of the Chinese banyan tree (Ficus microcarpa), which is famous for its extraordinary aerial roots; Ficus hispida, a related fig species lacking aerial roots; and Eupristina verticillata, a wasp coevolving with …

A team of scientists from Hong Kong, the United Kingdom and the United States has sequenced and assembled the chromosomal-level genomes of two very different millipede species: the orange rosary millipede Helicorthomorpha holstii and the rusty millipede Trigoniulus corallinus. Their results provide important insights into arthropod evolution and highlight the …

In 2018, University of Portsmouth’s Professor John McGeehan and colleagues engineered an enzyme that can digest polyethylene terephthalate (PET), the primary material used in the manufacture of single-use plastic beverage bottles. Now, the same team has created a two-enzyme cocktail that can digest PET up to six times faster. Knott …

A multinational team of scientists led by Harvard Medical School, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, the Wellcome Sanger Institute, Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine and Imperial College London has created a detailed cellular and molecular map of six anatomical adult heart regions. Litviňuková et al created the first atlas of …

An international team of scientists has discovered stylistically unique ancient drawings, including the only known prehistoric depiction of a now-extinct giant sloth lemur, on the walls of a rock shelter in western Madagascar. Photograph (top) and artist’s sketch (bottom) of the inferred hunting scene: hunter (background, left) extends weapon toward …

A team of astrobiologists from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and the Carnegie Institution for Science has found a wide diversity of amino acids in Asuka 12236, a carbonaceous chondrite meteorite recovered from the Nansen Ice Field in Antarctica by Belgium and Japan researchers in 2012. This SEM image shows …

Genetic Researchers Reconstruct Evolutionary In a new study, an international team of scientists used 22 newly-sequenced genomes from 18 extant species of penguins to reconstruct the history of their diversification and adaptation. The authors found that ancient penguins diverged in the early Miocene epoch in Australia and New Zealand and …

Scientists have discovered a new population of taste cells that can detect multiple types of stimuli, including chemicals from different taste qualities. Most taste cells selectively respond to a specific stimulus type while broadly responsive cells respond to multiple taste qualities. Image credit: Jhanna Flora / Kathryn Medler. Taste buds …