Life Sciences and Chemistry

After 40 years of searching for the photoreceptor that controls multiple vital processes in fungi, researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas have discovered the protein that triggers this phenomenon.

Light regulates several physiological processes in fungi, including their ability to produce spores and the synchronization of their internal biological clocks, but their photoreceptors – receptors that are sensitive to light and are essential for most ongoing processes – were not

The average back garden may contain twice as many species as have so far been identified on the whole planet, according to a study published today by British scientists.

But gardeners would need a microscope to observe the massive biodiversity, which exists almost entirely among micro-organisms in the soil.

Using new methods of analysis, Dr Tom Curtis, of the Department of Civil Engineering, Newcastle University, England, and colleagues, estimated that a tonne of soil could contain

Genes that are inappropriately turned on play a critical role in triggering some diseases. For researchers, the trick is learning how to deactivate these genes to treat illnesses. In a step toward reaching that goal, scientists at Stanford University Medical Center have developed a gene-therapy technique to switch off genes in mice. The finding could potentially lead to ways of treating such diseases as cancer, hepatitis C and AIDS.

In plants and lower organisms such as flies or worms, rese

The Science Generation project which European research commissioner Philippe Busquin is presenting in Brussels today aims to make decision-makers, politicians and scientists, as well as the general public, better informed on action to be taken at the interface between life sciences and society. This project, receiving €1.44 million in EU funding, seeks to set up networks of scientists, students and journalists, extending into the regions, with colloquia and public opinion surveys and debates online

As film buffs queue to watch the new Spider-man movie, geography students from the University of Sussex have gone one better by discovering a new species of spider in the wild.

The second year undergraduates were taking part in a field course to the Seychelles, one of the most biologically diverse places on the planet. As part of this trip the students were responsible for helping to set insect traps in the Vallée de Mai, a UNESCO World Heritage Site on Praslin, the second-largest island in

Bacteria that reproduce inside aphids have not changed their genetic make-up for the last 50-70 million years. This makes the genomes of these bacteria the most stable of all organisms yet studied. This finding is presented by a team of scientists at Uppsala University, Sweden, in the latest issue of the scientific journal Science.

Under the leadership of Professor Siv Andersson, researchers Ivica Tama, Lisa Klasson, Björn Canbäck, Kristina Näslund, Ann-Sofie Eriksson, and Johan Sandström at