Could a novel approach to genetic studies give us a clearer picture of how evolutionary adaptations occur? That's what the findings of new research on a common backyard bird, the house finch, imply. A groundbreaking pangenomic study has revealed a major

Beans are a key food at the dietary level, boasting high nutritional value and constituting the most directly consumed legume. They also have a "superpower" in the field: they are able to fix nitrogen to the soil, so they reduce the need for nit

The blue whale is the largest animal on the planet. It consumes enormous quantities of tiny, shrimp-like animals known as krill to support a body of up to 100 feet (30 meters) long. Blue whales and other baleen whales, which filter seawater through their

A Mississippi State University scientist has discovered a hopping treasure trove—16 new species of grasshoppers living in the thorny scrubs of U.S. and Mexican deserts.

A new review has documented the remarkable journey of Australia's most critically endangered marsupial, the Gilbert's potoroo, from its rediscovery to ongoing recovery efforts.

A corn plant knows how to find water in soil with the very tips of its roots, but some varieties, including many used for breeding high-yielding corn in the U.S., appear to have lost a portion of that ability, according to a Stanford-led study. With clima

There's a longstanding attitude in many farming communities that trees and agriculture don't mix. But agroforestry—the intentional integration of trees and shrubs in agricultural systems, such as planting trees as windbreaks, integrating trees on pastur

The fatty membrane surrounding every living cell is a vibrant environment where countless biological processes take place. This membrane protects the cell from its surroundings and divides it into internal compartments; it is responsible for metabolism, e

As well as being essential in the precise packaging of DNA into the space of the nucleus, histone proteins are also the site of modifications, chemical additions referred to as epigenetic marks, that control whether a gene is silenced or expressed.

Synthetic biologists from Yale were able to re-write the genetic code of an organism—a novel genomically recoded organism (GRO) with one stop codon—using a cellular platform that they developed enabling the production of new classes of synthetic proteins.

A new, comprehensive map of all the genes essential for blood infections in Plasmodium knowlesi (P. knowlesi), a parasite that causes malaria in humans, has been generated by researchers at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and colleagues. The map

Language has long been considered a uniquely human trait, with features that mark it out as distinct from the communication of all other species. However, research published in Science has uncovered the same statistical structure that is a hallmark of hum