Mindzilla – Evolution

Evolution

DNA Duplication Linked to the Origin and Evolution of Pine Trees and Their Relatives

July 22, 2021
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Gainesville, FL — Plants are DNA hoarders. Adhering to the maxim of never throwing anything out that might be useful later, they often duplicate their entire genome and hang on to the added genetic...

Songbirds Like It Sweet!

July 14, 2021
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Hong Kong, China — Humans can easily identify sweet-tasting foods – and with pleasure. However, many carnivorous animals lack this ability, and whether birds, descendants of meat-eating dinosaurs,...

Protein ‘Big Bang’ Reveals Molecular Makeup for Medicine and Bioengineering

July 2, 2021
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Urbana, IL — Proteins have been quietly taking over our lives since the COVID-19 pandemic began. We’ve been living at the whim of the virus’s so-called “spike” protein, which...

Evolution of Axial Patterning

July 1, 2021
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Vienna, Austria — In a new article in Nature Communications, a research group led by Grigory Genikhovich at the University of Vienna has found that the way the main body axis of sea anemones is patterned...

Are We Genetically ‘Grounded’?

June 14, 2021
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Jerusalem, Israel — For centuries, scientists, aeronautic designers and adventure-seekers have sought to replicate the qualities that allow birds to fly, namely wing-structure and balance. However,...

Vital Tool to Study Virus Evolution in the Test Tube

June 10, 2021
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Brisbane, Australia — Variants of viruses, such as that causing COVID-19, can now be quickly studied in the laboratory, even before they emerge in nature and become a major public health challenge. The...

Newly Discovered Enzymes are not Heavy Metal Fans

May 27, 2021
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Tsukuba, Japan — Carbonic anhydrases are essential enzymes that are present in virtually all living things; all eight classes of carbonic anhydrases that have been identified to date need a metal ion...

Study Reveals New Biomolecule

May 18, 2021
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Stanford, CA — Stanford researchers have discovered a new kind of biomolecule that could play a significant role in the biology of all living things. The novel biomolecule, dubbed glycoRNA, is a...

New Cyanobacteria Species Spotlights Early Life

May 17, 2021
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Ithaca, NY — Cyanobacteria are one of the unsung heroes of life on Earth. They first evolved to perform photosynthesis about 2.4 billion years ago, pumping tons of oxygen into the atmosphere –...

Life may have Become Cellular by Using Unusual Molecules

May 14, 2021
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Tokyo, Japan — All modern life is composed of cells, from single-celled bacteria to more complex organisms such as humans, which may contain billions or even trillions of cells, but how life came to...

History of Giants in the Gene: Scientists Use DNA to Trace the Origins of Giant Viruses

May 12, 2021
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Deinze, Belgium — 2003 was a big year for virologists. The first giant virus was discovered in this year, which shook the virology scene, revising what was thought to be an established understanding...

Surprising Evolutionary History of Our Oral Bacteria

May 11, 2021
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Jena, Germany — Living in and on our bodies are trillions of microbial cells belonging to thousands of bacterial species – our microbiome. These microbes play key roles in human health, but little...

Origins of Life could have Started with DNA-Like XNAs

April 8, 2021
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Nagoya, Japan — Nagoya University scientists in Japan have demonstrated how DNA-like molecules could have come together as a precursor to the origins of life. The findings, published in the journal Nature...

Research Unlocks the Genomic Secrets of Organisms that Thrive in Extreme Deep-Sea

March 29, 2021
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Hong Kong, China — A study led by scientists at Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU) has decoded the genomes of the deep-sea clam (Archivesica marissinica) and the chemoautotrophic bacteria (Candidatus...

New Proteins ‘Out of Nothing’

March 15, 2021
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Münster, Germany — Proteins are the key component in all modern forms of life. Haemoglobin, for example, transports the oxygen in our blood; photosynthesis proteins in the leaves of plants convert...

3Rs of the Genome: Reading, Writing, and Regulating

March 11, 2021
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State College, PA — A massive effort to map the precise binding locations of over 400 different kinds of proteins on the yeast genome has produced the most thorough and high-resolution map of chromosome...

Evolution’s Game of Rock-Paper-Scissors

February 16, 2021
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Bethlehem, PA — If B is better than A, and C is better than B, it follows by the transitive property that C is better than A. And, yet, this is not always the case. Every kid is familiar with the Rock-Paper-Scissors...

A Glimpse into the Formation of Mitoribosome

February 16, 2021
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Solna, Sweden — The mitochondrial ribosome is an intricate machine that translates the organellar genome into functional proteins. The formation of the mitochondrial ribosome is a hierarchical process...

Scientists Identify How Harmless Gut Bacteria “Turn Bad”

February 15, 2021
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Bath, UK — An international team of scientists has determined how harmless E. coli gut bacteria in chickens can easily pick up the genes required to evolve to cause a life-threatening infection. Their...

Unusual DNA Folding Increases the Rates of Mutations

February 10, 2021
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State College, PA — DNA sequences that can fold into shapes other than the classic double helix tend to have higher mutation rates than other regions in the human genome. New research shows that the...

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