News by Subject Biology

Like someone from Minnesota being dropped into an Arizona heat wave, giant kelp living in cooler, high-latitude waters were more vulnerable to excessive heat than kelp already living in warmer, Southern California waters, according to a study of Chilean and Californian kelp.

A collaborative research group has succeeded in identifying an important transcription factor, GCAM1, which allows liverwort plants to asexually reproduce through creating clonal progenies (vegetative reproduction). Furthermore, this transcription factor was revealed to have the same origin as those which regulate secondary bud formation in angiosperms. It is hoped that these discoveries will lead to the development of technologies to increase the cultivation rate of a variety of plants in agriculture and horticulture.

Both transcription factors regulate the expression of genes involved in embryo development, among other functions, although they exert very different roles. The study also refutes the theory accepted to date that SMAD2 does not bind to DNA. Published in Genes & Development, the research is the result of collaboration between Maria J. Macias' lab at IRB Barcelona and Joan Massagué's group at the Sloan Kettering Institute (New York, US).

The generation of species-specific singing in songbirds is associated with species-specific patterns of gene activity in brain regions called song nuclei, according to a study published Nov. 12 in the open-access journal PLOS Biology by Kazuhiro Wada of Hokkaido University in Japan, and colleagues. According to the authors, the findings could be a promising step toward a better understanding of the contribution of multiple genes to the evolution of behaviors.

The frequent presence of leeches with a hidden lifestyle in the mantle cavity of freshwater mussels has been recorded since the second half of the 19th century. Yet this was, until now, regarded as an accidental phenomenon. Recent research not only reveals seven mussel-associated leech species new to science, but also shows that their association evolved over millions of years.

In a study to be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers revealed that many larval fish species from different ocean habitats are ingesting plastics in their preferred nursery habitat.

All cells in the body contain the same genetic material. The difference between cells therefore depends solely on which genes are expressed or 'turned on'. Now, researchers from the University of Copenhagen have gained new insights into how genes are turned on and off and how the cells "forget their past" while developing into a specific cell in the body. This new knowledge is published in Nature and will be crucial for stem cell therapy and potentially treating people with cancer.