Biology News

Scientists Figure Out How Teeth Sense Cold

This artist’s illustration depicts how, centuries ago, people believed that small worms living within the tooth caused excruciating pain via their cold breath. Proof of tooth worms came when an inflamed tooth was ripped out and small stringy structures -- the nerves and blood vessels -- were visible within the disintegrating pulp and dentin. The tooth worms are actually odontoblasts, cells that form the dentin layer of the tooth, which encases the soft tooth pulp. Bernal et al. demonstrated that the cold sensation in our teeth is mediated by the odontoblast (green structures) and transmitted to the brain via nerves (red), where pain is perceived. Image credit: Katharina Zimmermann.
Mar 29, 2021 by News Staff

Odontoblasts, cells that form dentin, the shell beneath the tooth’s enamel that encases the soft dental pulp containing nerves and blood vessels, contain cold-sensitive proteins that detect temperature drops, according to a new study published in the journal Science Advances. This artist’s illustration depicts how, centuries ago, people believed that small worms living within the tooth caused excruciating pain via their cold breath. Proof of tooth...

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The Alagoas screech owl (Megascops alagoensis) in Brazil. Image credit: Gustavo Malacco.

Two New Species of Screech Owls Identified

Mar 29, 2021 by News Staff

Ornithologists from the United States, Brazil and Finland have described two new species of the owl genus Megascops from the Amazon and Atlantic forests. The...

Scanning electron micrograph of a human T cell. Image credit: NIAID.

Biologists Discover New Type of T Cell

Mar 26, 2021 by News Staff

Biologists have analyzed T cells from the gray short-tailed opossum (Monodelphis domestica) and uncovered a previously unknown lineage, called γµ T cells,...

Brazil reef octopuses (Octopus insularis) have ‘quiet’ and ‘active sleep,’ with different episode duration and periodicity. Image credit: Medeiros et al., doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2021.102223.

Octopuses, Like Humans, Have Quiet and Active Sleep States

Mar 26, 2021 by News Staff

In a new study, published this week in the journal iScience, a team of researchers showed that Brazil reef octopuses (Octopus insularis) have two different...

Silverleaf whiteflies (Bemisia tabaci) carry a plant-derived phenolic glucoside malonyltransferase gene BtPMaT1, which enables the insects to neutralize phenolic glycosides in host plants. Image credit: Xia et al., doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2021.02.014.

Silverleaf Whiteflies Carry Plant-Derived Detoxification Gene, New Study Shows

Mar 26, 2021 by News Staff

The silverleaf whitefly (Bemisia tabaci) incorporated a gene called BtPMaT1 from plants into its genome roughly 35 million years ago and now uses it to...

Living individual of Trioceros wolfgangboehmei from Dinsho, Ethiopia showing a prominent white temporal spot and dorsolateral longitudinal stripe. Image credit: Petr Nečas.

New Chameleon Species Discovered in Ethiopia

Mar 24, 2021 by News Staff

A team of zoologists from Germany and Czech Republic has discovered a new species of chameleon living on the slopes of the Bale Mountains in Ethiopia. Living...

A fully bloomed Rafflesia tiomanensis. Image credit: Yunoh et al.

New Species of Rafflesia Discovered in Malaysia

Mar 23, 2021 by Natali Anderson

Researchers have found a new species of parasitic flowering plant in the forests of Pulau Tioman, an island in Malaysia. A fully bloomed Rafflesia tiomanensis....

Biologging 3D movement data revealed circling behaviors in marine animals. Image credit: Narazaki et al., doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2021.102221.

Mysterious Circling Behavior Found in Marine Animals

Mar 22, 2021 by News Staff

In a paper published in the journal iScience, a team of marine biologists from Japan, the United States and France reports the discovery of circling behavior...

Transmission electron micrograph showing the general cell morphology of Methylobacterium jeotgali. Image credit: Aslam et al., doi: 10.1099/ijs.0.64625-0.

Previously Unknown Species of Bacterium Found on International Space Station

Mar 17, 2021 by Natali Anderson

Biologists have found four bacterial strains of the Methylobacteriaceae family in surface samples collected from the International Space Station (ISS)...

This image shows the head and the body of Elysia marginata, a day after autotomy; the shed body is much heavier (over 80% of the total weight) than the head. Image credit: Sayaka Mitoh.

Sacoglossan Sea Slugs Can Shed, Then Regenerate Their Main Body

Mar 9, 2021 by News Staff

A biological phenomenon called autotomy is the voluntary shedding of a body part. It is common to distantly-related animals such as arthropods, gastropods,...

Tagged peregrine falcon (Falco peregrinus). Image credit: Andrew Dixon.

Biologists Find Evidence of Migration Gene in Birds

Mar 9, 2021 by News Staff

Millions of migratory birds occupy seasonally favorable breeding grounds in the Arctic, but scientists know little about the formation, maintenance and...

The common cuttlefish (Sepia officinalis). Image credit: Roger Hanlon.

Cuttlefish Pass Fishy Version of ‘Marshmallow Test’

Mar 4, 2021 by News Staff

New research led by the University of Cambridge and the Marine Biological Laboratory demonstrates that common cuttlefish (Sepia officinalis) can tolerate...

Stromatolites at Shark Bay, Western Australia. Image credit: Paul Harrison / CC BY-SA 3.0.

Viruses May Have Played Important Role in Creating Earth’s Earliest Lifeforms

Mar 4, 2021 by News Staff

Viruses may be the missing piece of the puzzle that could help explain how soft microbial mats transition into hard stromatolites that are prevalent in...

A male superb lyrebird (Menura novaehollandiae). Image credit: Alex Maisey, University of Wollongong.

Male Superb Lyrebirds Imitate Alarm Calls of Mobbing Flocks to Lure Potential Mates

Mar 3, 2021 by News Staff

During their song and dance displays, male superb lyrebirds (Menura novaehollandiae) create an elaborate acoustic illusion of a mixed-species flock of...

Global distribution of production rates of radiolytic hydrogen and radiolytic oxidants in marine sediment; rates are expressed in mol electron equivalents/cm2/year; in electron equivalents, water radiolysis produces hydrogen and oxidized chemicals at equal rates; although abyssal clay has a volumetric radiolytic production rate an order of magnitude higher than the volumetric rate for continental-margin sediment types, the sediment layer that blankets open-ocean regions is much thinner and consequently has much lower vertically integrated radiolytic production than the sediment of continental margins. Image credit: Sauvage et al., doi: 10.1038/s41467-021-21218-z.

Subseafloor Microbial Communities Survive on Products of Radioactive Process, Study Suggests

Mar 3, 2021 by News Staff

Radionuclides are ubiquitous in sediment and rock, where their decay leads to the production of hydrogen and oxidized chemicals via radiolysis of water;...

A Meidum goose (left), life reconstruction (center) and a modern red-breasted goose (right). Image credit: A. Romilio / Tambako the Jaguar.

4,600-Year-Old Egyptian Painting Depicts Extinct Species of Goose

Mar 2, 2021 by News Staff

University of Queensland’s Dr. Anthony Romilio has examined the ‘Meidum Geese,’ a painting from the Chapel of Itet at Meidum in Egypt. A Meidum goose...

An oblique photo of a male Pharohylaeus lactiferous. Image credit: J.B. Dorey, doi: 10.3897/jhr.81.59365.

Rare Species of Australian Native Bee Rediscovered

Mar 1, 2021 by News Staff

Pharohylaeus lactiferous, a species of Australian endemic bee in the genus Pharohylaeus, had not been seen on the continent since 1923. An oblique photo...

Captive Pedetes capensis photographed under visible light (three insets) and under 395 nm UV light with a 470 nm longpass filter to documenting the orange to red biofluorescence ( 650 nm) of springhare. Images contain two different captive-bred, captive individuals (female -- bottom two larger images under ultraviolet light; male -- all remaining images) from the Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo & Aquarium in Omaha, Nebraska, the United States. Image credit: Olson et al., doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-83588-0.

Springhares Glow Orange and Red under Ultraviolet Light

Feb 23, 2021 by Natali Anderson

Scientists have discovered a vivid porphyrin-based biofluorescence in two species of springhares, Pedetes capensis and Pedetes surdaster. Captive Pedetes...

Camarillo-Guerrero et al. introduce the Gut Phage Database, a collection of 142,809 non-redundant viral genomes (>10 kb) obtained by mining a dataset of 28,060 globally distributed human gut metagenomes and 2,898 reference genomes of cultured gut bacteria. Image credit: Camarillo-Guerrero et al., doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2021.01.029.

Biologists Find Almost 143,000 Bacteriophage Species in Human Gut

Feb 19, 2021 by News Staff

A team of biologists from the Wellcome Sanger Institute, the European Bioinformatics Institute and the Universidad de los Andes has identified 142,809...

Coralliozetus clausus. Image credit: Phil Hastings.

New Species of Reef-Dwelling Fish Discovered

Feb 16, 2021 by News Staff

A marine biologist from Scripps Institution of Oceanography has discovered a new species of chaenopsid blenny in the waters around Cocos Island (Isla del...

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