Biology News

Scientists Identify Sour Taste Receptor in Fruit Flies

The receptors required for the gustatory responses to sour compounds have been elusive. Rimal et al discover a Drosophila taste receptor, IR7a, which is required for rejecting a sour chemical. Surprisingly, IR7a is narrowly tuned to acetic acid, suggesting that carboxylic acids are detected by a repertoire of receptors. Image credit: Rimal et al, doi: 10.1016/j.celrep.2019.01.042.
Feb 6, 2019 by News Staff

Sour taste allows for the detection of hydrogen ions and organic acids. It is one of the five basic tastes and, along with other chemical and textural features, allows animals from flies to humans to discriminate between foods that are safe and appealing from other options that are dangerous. Now, a team of scientists from Kookmin University in Korea and the University of California, Santa Barbara, has discovered the first sour taste receptor used...

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Forster et al created the most comprehensive collection of human intestinal bacteria to date.

Researchers Discover 105 New Species of Human Gastrointestinal Bacteria

Feb 5, 2019 by News Staff

A team of microbiologists has isolated 105 completely new species of bacteria from healthy people’s intestines. Forster et al created the most comprehensive...

Ten mammalian and five bird species were documented scavenging fish carcasses in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone including Eurasian otters (Lutra lutra). Image credit: Schlichting et al, doi: 10.1016/j.fooweb.2018.e00107.

Wildlife is Abundant in Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, Confirms New Study

Feb 4, 2019 by News Staff

A new study published in the journal Food Webs provides additional evidence that wildlife is abundant in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, a large area of...

Han et al compare stable isotope ratios from the bones and teeth of extant and extinct pandas and show that their trophic niches are distinctly different, although both species had a C3-dominated diet over time and space. The results indicate that ancient pandas possibly had more complex diets and habitats than do their modern counterparts. This image shows a male giant panda named Xiao Liwu at San Diego Zoo. Image credit: Sci-News.com.

Ancient Giant Pandas Had More Complex Diet than Do Their Modern Counterparts: Study

Feb 1, 2019 by News Staff

Today, giant pandas are represented by one iconic species, Ailuropoda melanoleuca, and they live only in the understory of particular mountains in southwestern...

The largest specimen of the Berry Cave salamander (Gyrinophilus gulolineatus) measures 9.4 inches. Image credit: Nicholas Gladstone / University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Record-Breaking Salamander Found in Tennessee

Jan 28, 2019 by News Staff

A team of scientists has discovered the largest individual of any cave salamander in North America — a 9.4-inch (23.8 cm) long specimen of the Berry...

The Atlantic puffin (Fratercula arctica) is one of the 176 bird species studied by Navalón et al. Image credit: Free-Photos.

Study Sheds Some New Light on Evolution of Bird Beaks

Jan 25, 2019 by News Staff

The observation that Galapagos finches possessed different beak shapes to obtain different foods was central to the theory of evolution by natural selection,...

Reflection-polarization characteristics of the sunlit sticky white-striped brown human model. Image credit: Horvath et al, doi: 10.1098/rsos.181325.

Striped Bodypaintings Deter Blood-Sucking Flies: Study

Jan 23, 2019 by News Staff

Bodypainting is widespread in African, Australian and Papua New Guinean indigenous communities. Many bodypaintings use white or bright stripes on brown...

Aedes aegypti mosquitoes after an experiment; the lack of red in their guts indicates the compounds repelled the mosquitoes, which chose not to feed. Image credit: Mayur Kajla.

Powerful Mosquito-Repelling Compounds Isolated from Rare Bacterium

Jan 21, 2019 by News Staff

A mixture of mosquito-repelling compounds isolated from a Gram-negative bacterium called Xenorhabdus budapestensis exhibits potent feeding-deterrent activity...

Tasmanian devil (Sarcophilus harrisii). Image credit: J.J. Harrison / CC BY-SA 3.0.

New Research Reveals How Facial Tumor Disease Became Transmissible in Tasmanian Devils

Jan 17, 2019 by News Staff

The Tasmanian devil (Sarcophilus harrisii), the world’s largest living carnivorous marsupial, is threatened with extinction by a horizontally transmitted...

In this electron micrograph, Varroa destructor (arrow) is wedged between the abdominal plates of a honey bee’s exoskeleton. Image credit: UMD / USDA / PNAS.

Varroa Mites Feed Primarily on Honeybee Fat Body Tissues, Not Hemolymph

Jan 15, 2019 by News Staff

A parasite called the varroa mite (Varroa destructor) is the most serious pest of European honeybees (Apis mellifera) worldwide. For decades, scientists...

ISS bacteria are just trying to survive. Image credit: Arek Socha.

Space Station Bacteria are Adapting to Survive, Not to Harm, Researchers Say

Jan 9, 2019 by News Staff

A team of scientists from Northwestern University and NASA’s Johnson Space Center has found that — despite its seemingly harsh conditions —...

Barley (Hordeum vulgare). Image credit: Kang B.C.H.

Scientists Discover New Complex Carbohydrate in Barley

Jan 9, 2019 by News Staff

A team of scientists at the University of Adelaide, Australia, has discovered a new complex carbohydrate in the barley (Hordeum vulgare), the world’s...

Hyloscirtus hillisi. Image credit: Gustavo Pazmiño, BIOWEB Ecuador.

Bizarre New Species of Treefrog Discovered in Ecuador

Jan 4, 2019 by Natali Anderson

A team of researchers from the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador has described a new species of treefrog from Cordillera del Condor, a largely...

Sima et al found that cis-regulatory elements control the 3D compartmentalization, architecture of the genome, and replication timing in a CTCF-independent manner. Image credit: Sima et al, doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2018.11.036.

Scientists Solve Mystery of How and When DNA Replicates

Jan 3, 2019 by News Staff

A research team led by Florida State University scientists has demonstrated that there are specific points along the DNA molecule that control replication....

Histochemical staining of Arabidopsis thaliana: (i) 7-day-old seedling primary root tip, (ii) rosette leaf, (iii) cauline leaf and (iv) inflorescence of Col-0 and prt6-1 lines expressing wild type VRN2-GUS. Scale bar in (i) - 500 μm. Image credit: Gibbs et al, doi: 10.1038/s41467-018-07875-7.

Biologists Unravel Memory Mechanism in Flowering Plants

Dec 27, 2018 by News Staff

A team of researchers from the United Kingdom and the Netherlands has identified a mechanism that enables angiosperms (flowering plants) to sense and remember...

Physarum polycephalum on an oak log. Image credit: Mushroom Observer / CC BY-SA 3.0.

Slime Mold Can Solve Exponentially Complicated Problems in Linear Time

Dec 26, 2018 by Sam Sander Effron

Researchers from Lanzhou University in China have shown that the slime mold Physarum polycephalum is able to solve the Traveling Salesman Problem, a combinatorial...

Bees can solve seemingly clever counting tasks with very small numbers of neurons in their brains. Image credit: PollyDot.

Bees Can Solve Counting Tasks with Just Four Neurons, New Study Shows

Dec 25, 2018 by News Staff

Bees can count up to four or five items, can choose the smaller or the larger number from a group and even choose ‘zero’ against other numbers when...

Examining 1,000-year-old corncobs from an ancient ruin in Arizona, Peyambari et al found a previously unknown RNA virus. Image credit: Roossinck Laboratory, Pennsylvania State University.

Researchers Find Oldest Known Plant Virus

Dec 13, 2018 by News Staff

Scientists studying ancient corncobs found at Antelope House, an Ancestral Puebloan ruin located at Canyon de Chelly National Monument, Arizona, have discovered...

The Dracula ant (Mystrium camillae) can snap its mandibles at speeds of up to 90 m/s. Image credit: Adrian Smith.

Dracula Ants’ Mandibles are Fastest Known Animal Appendages

Dec 12, 2018 by News Staff

In a study published today in the journal Royal Society Open Science, researchers examined the kinematics and functional morphology of the Dracula ant...

A ‘Blue Marble’ image of the Earth taken from the VIIRS instrument aboard NASA’s Earth-observing satellite Suomi NPP (named in honor of Verner E. Suomi of the University of Wisconsin). This composite image uses a number of swaths of the Earth’s surface taken on January 4, 2012. Image credit: NASA / NOAA / GSFC / Suomi NPP / VIIRS / Norman Kuring.

Researchers Estimate Total Mass of Earth’s Deep Life: 15-23 Billion Tons of Carbon

Dec 11, 2018 by News Staff

An international collaboration of researchers from the Deep Carbon Observatory (DCO) has made several important discoveries, including how much and what...

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