fixation

Plant hemoglobins: Oxygen handlers critical for nitrogen fixation

...ysterious plant hemoglobin serves to assist in the fixation of nitrogen in the root nodules of legumes through...ization of nitrogen-poor soils. Symbiotic nitrogen fixation is important for sustainable agriculture and contributes millions of tons of reduced nitrogen to cro...

Bobbing birds do it for a reason

...xation. This result strongly suggests that visual fixation not only removes motion blur but also plays a critical role in permitting the detection, localization, and recognition of objects. Head-bobbing behavior, so characteristic of birds, permits the close and stable examination of objects in view during t...

Plants, too, have ways to manage freeloaders

...y 15 years she has studied the ecology of nitrogen fixation in legumes. Lupines are widespread and beautiful ...lants could detect natural differences in nitrogen fixation among the microbes they encounter in the soil. Interestingly, not all plants seem to nodulate the b...

Hot-spring bacteria flip a metabolic switch

...fixed into larger, carbon-containing compounds. N2 fixation is a problem for photosynthetic cells, since the o...ges of the mat, raising the question of whether N2 fixation was critical for organisms in the hotter regions of the mat. Because heat tolerant, single-celled cy...

Sandia work launched on space shuttle shows live cells influence growth of nanostructures

...lly examine a cell, researchers use time-consuming fixation or solvent extraction techniques," says Brinker. "We can spin-coat a cell in seconds, pop the cell into an electron microscope, and it doesn't shrink when air is evacuated from the microscope chamber." The cell can be immediately imaged, says Brink...

Microbe fixes nitrogen at a blistering 92 C

...cientists have speculated since 1981 that nitrogen fixation was occurring at hydrothermal vents because vent animals had completely different nitrogen isotope ratios than non-vent deep sea animals. The work that led to FS406-22 was supported by Washington Sea Grant, based at the UW, and the NASA Astrobiolog...

Fast-freeze snapshot yields new picture of nerve-muscle junction

...e freeze method. What's more, during gluteraldhyde fixation the nematodes writhe around, releasing neurotransm...ed." Richmond said the conventional gluteraldhyde fixation technique was the problem with the earlier view of vesicle positioning in nerve synapses, and she pr...

Deep in the ocean, a clam that acts like a plant

...ergy from hydrogen sulfide is used to drive carbon fixation in much the same way that chloroplasts carry out carbon fixation," Eisen said. The symbiotic bacteria also fix nitrogen and produce amino acids, vitamins and other nutrients required by the clam. Studies of the deep sea have implications for study...

Tracing broken wiring in stroke patients

... other than holding still and possibly maintaining fixation and therefore can be acquired even in patients that cannot perform a task?This significantly widens the range of patients that can participate in functional brain-imaging protocols." ...

New findings blow a decade of assumptions out of the water

...portant to have a global picture of where nitrogen fixation is occurring ?that is where nitrogen gas is being ... understand the environmental controls on nitrogen fixation and its likely response to climate change in the past and in the future, says Curtis Deutsch, a Univ...

Puzzling plankton yield secrets to role in evolution/global photosynthesis

...ommunity’s emerging understanding about how carbon fixation is carried out by picoplankton," said Brian Palenik, lead author and researcher at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego. "From an applied perspective, we are learning some of the tricks nature has employed t...

Pesticides choke pathway for nature to produce nitrogen for crops

... reduces a legume crop's natural need for nitrogen fixation but leaves a shortage of natural nitrogen in the s...ignaling, the overall amount of symbiotic nitrogen fixation is reduced. If this natural fertilizer source is not replaced by increased application of synthetic ...