Researchers propose that some of the planet’s earliest photosynthesizers benefited from a slowing of the Earth’s rotation that allowed them to produce a surplus of oxygen and paved the way for more complex life.
In a trio of studies, researchers follow up on a 40-year-old finding that certain bacteriophages replace adenine with so-called diaminopurine, perhaps to avoid host degradation.
After a nearly 30-year hunt, researchers have shown that a neurotoxin generated by cyanobacteria on invasive plants is responsible for eagle and waterbird deaths from vacuolar myelinopathy.
Tests point to a toxic algal bloom that might have led to the unprecedented deaths of hundreds of African elephants in Botswana earlier this year, but the evidence isn’t conclusive.
Elevated levels of a neurotoxin in northeastern Brazil’s drinking water and a high incidence of microcephaly in the region led scientists to look for a link, and they found one.
Biological production of this greenhouse gas, once thought to be the reserve of anaerobic microbes, occurs in these widespread, photosynthesizing cyanobacteria.
Evolution of Y chromosome; delivering gene with “bionic ears”; diversity of an important cyanobacterium; charting genome-sequencing progress; blockbuster pharma deals
