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FLSHclust Unveils 188 Novel CRISPR-Associated Gene Modules

Employing a groundbreaking algorithm named FLSHclust (“flash clust”), scientists have unearthed 188 uncommon and previously undiscovered CRISPR-associated gene modules, among billions of protein sequences. This includes the identification of a novel type VII CRISPR-Cas system.

24 Nov 2023

Understanding the Intricacies of LUCA

The ‘last universal common ancestor’ of all living organisms, LUCA, lived 4.32 to 4.52 billion years ago.

22 Nov 2023

Using Genetic Engineering to Facilitate Mutualistic Relationships Between Plants and Nitrogen-Fixing Microbes

Nitrogen is an essential nutrient for plant growth, but the overuse of synthetic nitrogen fertilizers in agriculture is not sustainable.

27 Sep 2023

Key Proteins in Human Breast Milk Crucial for Baby’s Healthy Gut

The abundance of two species of bacteria known to be good for human health and used as probiotics, Clostridium butyricum and Parabacteroides distasonis, has been linked to high concentrations of key proteins in human breast milk, particularly osteopontin and κ-casein.

13 Sep 2023

Examining the Biology of Microbes and Their Response to Global Changes

Around the world, organisms are experiencing unprecedented levels of stress from habitat destruction, climate change, and several other human-driven changes to the surrounding.

21 Aug 2023

Amazon Dark Earth for Accelerated Tree Growth

A study published in the journal Frontiers in Soil Science asserts that a type of soil known as terra preta da Amazônia, or Amazon dark earth (ADE), encourages quicker growth of trees and improves their development in terms of quality.

2 Aug 2023

The Asgard Connection: New Research Uncovers the Origins of Complex Life

Thor, the legendary Norse god from the mythological city of Asgard, is not alone. According to groundbreaking research published in the journal Nature, we humans -; along with eagles, starfish, daisies and every complex organism on Earth -; are, in a sense, Asgardians.

23 Jun 2023

Speeding Up Forest Restoration Using New Biotechnological Approaches

Investigators from Brazil reveal that Amazonian dark earth (ADE), soils enriched by Amerindian people thousands of years ago, enhances the establishment and growth of seedlings of tree species vital for reforestation.

8 May 2023

Metabolic Network Compatibility Not Likely the Limiting Factor in Prokaryotic Endosymbiosis

"One of the great mysteries of biology," says Eric Libby, former SFI Postdoctoral Fellow, now an associate professor at the Integrated Science Lab (IceLab), Umeå University in Sweden, "is eukaryogenesis, or how eukaryotes arose." Scientists consider this to be a period of major evolutionary transition, critical to our understanding of the history and evolution of life on Earth.

25 Apr 2023

Viruses Interact with a Far More Diverse Set of Hosts than was Previously Thought

Viruses are the most abundant and diverse biological entities on Earth, living in every type of habitat. In the ocean alone viruses are ten times more abundant than microbes.

7 Apr 2023

Researchers Explain How a Single Mutation Causes Ataxia

Worldwide, only a handful of patients are known to suffer from episodic ataxia type 6, a neurological disease that causes transient loss of muscle control.

4 Apr 2023

Investigating methanogens to unravel the genetics of temperature adaptation

The history of the Earth has been one of physical extremes-;extreme atmospheric conditions, extreme chemical environments, and extreme temperatures.

28 Mar 2023

Elaborating how amino acids shaped the genetic code of ancient microbes

Researchers discovered that without specific amino acids, ancient proteins would not have identified how to evolve into anything alive on the planet today, including plants, animals, and humans, by mimicking early Earth conditions in the lab.

28 Feb 2023

Researchers expand the known defensive abilities of CRISPR–Cas systems

Viruses can infect bacteria and archaea, just as they can humans. These microbes have evolved their own immune defense mechanisms to combat their pathogens. Bacterial defenses, like CRISPR-Cas systems, contain a variety of proteins and functions that aid bacteria in protecting themselves from foreign intruders.

5 Jan 2023

Methane emissions offset atmospheric carbon dioxide uptake in the blue carbon ecosystems

Bladderwrack in the Baltic Sea emits significant amounts of methane, which, to some extent, can offset the uptake of atmospheric carbon dioxide by these algae.

5 Jan 2023

Cryo-EM solves the decades-old mystery of bacterial movement

Scientists from the University of Virginia School of Medicine and their colleagues have discovered a decades-old mystery regarding how E. coli and other bacteria move.

28 Sep 2022

Researchers determine a novel antiviral technique to combat bacteria

Bacteria use a wide range of defense strategies to combat viral infection, and some of these systems have resulted in game-changing technologies like CRISPR-based gene editing.

From Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) 15 Aug 2022

Researchers examine ancient microbes to find life beyond earth

Researchers have reproduced what life was like for some of the oldest species on Earth using light-capturing proteins found in living microorganisms. These initiatives may enable everyone to spot life in distant worlds, whose atmospheres mirror the pre-oxygen planet more closely.

1 Jul 2022

Origin of chromatin in ancient microbes happened 1–2 billion years ago, study reveals

Nature’s storage solution originally emerged in ancient microbes living on Earth around one and two billion years ago, according to researchers at the Center for Genomic Regulation (CRG).

10 Jun 2022

Researchers determine the ethical difficulties in microbiome research

A human rights activist and a team of anthropologists and human biologists are scrutinizing how Indigenous peoples are involved in microbiome research.

23 May 2022