Phys.org news

In a breakthrough that defies nature, Northwestern University and Stanford University synthetic biologists have created a new artificial metabolism that transforms waste carbon dioxide (CO2) into useful biological building ...

One of the biggest quests in biology is understanding how every cell in an animal's body carries an identical genome yet still gives rise to a kaleidoscope of different cell types and tissues. A neuron doesn't look nor behave ...

A new UNSW-led global meta-analysis shows that PFAS concentrations can double at every step up the food chain, leaving top predators—and humans—potentially exposed to higher chemical loads.

How does mimicry affect the way we judge other people? Whose behavior do we imitate, and in what situations? It turns out that we are more likely to mimic people who express joy, and we perceive those people as more attractive ...

The basics of photosynthesis are something that every student learns in school: carbon dioxide, water and light in; oxygen and sugar for growth out. In a world where atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are rising, it is plausible ...

Though ice sheet melting is widely talked of and debated, there is limited knowledge about what happens after the period of melting. Researchers dig into this "after" period and see how it relates to previous patterns.

A multinational scientific team led by UiT has uncovered the deepest known gas hydrate cold seep on the planet. The discovery was made during the Ocean Census Arctic Deep–EXTREME24 expedition and reveals a previously unknown ...

Proteins are among the most important molecular building blocks of life. They are chains of amino acids assembled in our cells by ribosomes, the molecular "protein factories" of our bodies. The genetic code of our genome ...

Aviation's climate impact is partly due to contrails—condensation that a plane streaks across the sky when it flies through icy and humid layers of the atmosphere. Contrails trap heat that radiates from the planet's surface, ...

Researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, have already leveraged the vast troves of geolocation data from vessel-tracking systems to pinpoint where whales and other large marine species are endangered by ship ...

Although it also performs some functions in men, estrogen, the main female sex hormone, is involved in a myriad of processes, which is why the body changes so much during menopause. This is because estrogens regulate hundreds ...

Ribosomes—the tiny factories that build proteins in our cells—don't all work with the same efficiency. Researchers from Japan have discovered that ribosomes actually compete with one another, and those that perform poorly ...