Collaborate Disseminate
Scientists have caught a once-in-a-billion-years evolutionary event in progress, as two lifeforms have merged into one organism that boasts abilities its peers would envy. Last time this happened, Earth got plants.Continue ReadingCategory: Biology, Sci… Continue reading Two lifeforms merge in once-in-a-billion-years evolutionary event
Venus may be a hellscape by our standards, but there’s a chance that some forms of life could evolve there. A new MIT study has now found that the building blocks of life are surprisingly stable in highly concentrated sulfuric acid – which Venus’ cloud… Continue reading Sulfuric acid clouds of Venus can’t dissolve life, new experiments find
We might find alien life as soon as 2030, according to a new study. A lab experiment has shown that instruments on a spacecraft headed to one of the most promising worlds to find life are sensitive enough to detect a single living cell in a single ice … Continue reading NASA mission could detect alien life from a single cell as early as 2030
Scientists have given yeast a brand new ability – gaining energy from light. The technique was remarkably easy, the team says, and could not only help us understand evolution but make better beer and biofuel.Continue ReadingCategory: Biology, ScienceTa… Continue reading Easy artificial evolution makes for solar-powered yeast
The most promising places to look for life beyond Earth might not be Mars but icy moons orbiting gas giants. Saturn’s moon Enceladus has just climbed the list, as NASA data reveals it’s home to a molecule thought to be key to the origin of life, and su… Continue reading “Swiss army knife” of life and energy buffet found on Saturnian moon
If movies are anything to go by, meeting aliens rarely goes well for humanity. To stop us making a faux pas of cosmic proportions, scientists have been practicing by trying to chat to whales in their own language – and judging by the early results, we … Continue reading Scientists practice communicating with aliens by chatting to whales
Phosphorus – a key ingredient for life as we know it – was thought to be relatively rare in space. But now, astronomers have detected a surprising amount of the stuff on the fringes of the galaxy, suggesting life may be more common in the cosmos.Contin… Continue reading Key chemical found at the edge of galaxy suggests alien life is common
Scientists have hit a major milestone in a 15-year project trying to build a completely synthetic yeast genome. Reporting in a bumper crop of new papers, the team has engineered viable yeast cells with more than 50% synthetic DNA for the first time, an… Continue reading Yeast with 50% synthetic DNA engineered in breakthrough genetic studies
The best places in our solar system to search for life beyond Earth aren’t planets like Mars – they’re icy moons like Europa. The case for life on this watery world just got stronger, as the James Webb Space Telescope has detected a fresh carbon source… Continue reading James Webb spots carbon on Europa, boosting case for life
The animal kingdom is home to all kinds of stories – adventures, romance, tragedy, and as it turns out, even horror stories. Scientists at Brown University have now uncovered a creepy new zombie story involving worms that propagate by hack their shrimp… Continue reading “Zombie shrimp”: How parasites hack host genes to do their bidding