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Tag: "appearance" at biology news

Gene needed for butterfly transformation also key for insects like grasshoppers

... broad is suppressed, the nymph simply repeats the appearance from its previous phase but continues to show normal growth, Erezyilmaz said. The organism eventually becomes an adult, but adult structures such as the wings are severely undersized. "Broad is not required to transform into the adult, but it is nee...

'Banana-jawed' fossil mammal linked to rare sound-producing skill

.... The banana-jawed hyraxes were much different in appearance from their modern counterparts, the scientists said. "Hyraxes today are improbably cute-looking mammals that are about the size of rabbits, look much like guinea pigs and have a penchant for sunbathing," Simons said. "Seven species of hyraxes now in...

UF scientists reveal ancient origin of vertebrate skeleton

...ed a nuisance, largely because of their unsettling appearance and demeanor - picture a leech longer than your forearm with a rasp-like mouth that flares open at the end of its body. Still, the lamprey and its cousin, the hagfish, offer insight into the early Cambrian period 540 million years ago, when multicel...

Embryos tell story of Earth's earliest animals

... non-existent. Much mystery surrounds the sudden appearance of animals in the fossil record, between 500 and 600 million years ago. Within a few million years, the fossil record goes from zero evidence of animals to great diversity in animal forms, including anomalocarids and trilobites. Harvard University bi...

Microbes under Greenland Ice may be preview of what scientists find under Mars' surface

...several meters above bedrock that was dark gray in appearance because of its high silt content, and identified dozens of types of both aerobic (oxygen-loving) and anaerobic (oxygen-phobic) microbes. They estimated that 80 percent of the microbes were still alive. Though methane has been detected in Mars' atmos...

Plant gene related to cancer treatment may foster new oncology drugs

...he Plant Journal article. Named for the pin-shaped appearance of the mutant originally used to identify the gene that directs the activities of PIN1, these proteins are members of the major protein family, called facilators, that aid processes such as hormone transport. Recent evidence suggests that teamwork b...

Sudden change in social status triggers genetic response in male fish, study finds

...As a result, the fish becomes more aggressive, his appearance changes dramatically and his gonads mature. When t...t results in such a profound change in an animal's appearance and behavior. "All we did was to change his social status, and yet it's reading from his brain ri...

Restaurant seafood prices since 1850s help plot marine harvests through history

...ones. "It's interesting on menus today to see the appearance of four and five pound (1.8 to 2.3 kilo) lobsters," he notes. "There is little chance those are coming from the inshore fisheries, which are so heavily fished a lobster is sent to market as soon as it's up to weight. What it indicates to me is the op...

Researchers use brain scans to predict behavior

... the right area. After the hint and prior to the appearance of the moving dots, researchers scanned the volunteers with functional brain imaging, which reveals increases in blood flow to different brain areas indicative of increased activity in those regions. Based on brain activity patterns that reflected wh...

Prions rapidly 'remodel' good protein into bad, Brown study shows

...t. "Our studies provide some insight into how the appearance of a misfolded protein ?a rare event ?can lead to devastating neurological diseases," said Serio. "Just a small amount of prion-state protein can rapidly convert healthy protein into a pathogenic form." ...

Study shows big game hunters, not climate change, killed off sloths

...anges in climate or vegetation ?and that the first appearance of humans must have been the decisive factor." The fossil record shows the people who arrived in North America were making sophisticated tools out of stone, bone and ivory, Steadman said. These "big-game hunters" had a traumatic effect on the animal...

New technology shows our ancestors ate…everything!

...ffers a more accurate measurement of the surface's appearance and is described in the August 4 issue of Nature. "Paleontologists and physical anthropologists have had a somewhat naive view on diet, in part due to the limitations of time-consuming, subjective approaches to analyzing teeth," said Teaford. "So it...

Hidden sponges determine coral reef's nutrient cycle

... role, Scheffers first of all examined the precise appearance and quantity of these virtually inaccessible caves and their living communities. He did that on the Caribbean island of Curaao using a special underwater camera. The films shot revealed that sponges were the most important inhabitants, followed by an...

Skull study sheds light on dinosaur diversity

...would have allowed that stance, and we can tie the appearance of those features with the proliferation of wide gauge tracks everywhere in the fossil record at the end of the dinosaur era." Wilson wonders if the change in locomotion---from typical sauropod narrow-gauge walking to titanosaur wide-gauge walking---...

Researchers discover how malaria parasite disperses from red blood cells

...eases/malaria_graphic.cfm .) The cell's lop-sided appearance probably results from destruction of the cytoskeleton, the molecular scaffolding that helps the cell to maintain its rounded shape. In the next stage, called the "flower" stage, the red blood cell assumes a roughly spherical shape, covered with roun...

'Underground' tunnels discovered as means for communication between immune system cells

...e dish, and, indeed, one to two minutes before the appearance of the thin membranes, there were bursts of color indicative of calcium flux. Given their earlier results, the researchers anticipated that by repeating the experiment with macrophages there'd be no response. But as luck would have it, the microscopi...

Sugar helps control cell division

...at the cycle of cell division is controlled by the appearance and disappearance of certain proteins called cyclins, but experiments have shown that you can knock out any of these and still get perfectly normal cell division," says the study's first author, Chad Slawson, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow in biologica...

Woods Hole Research Center plans controlled burn in Amazon rainforest

...the burn for each of the 3 parcels, to compare the appearance of the forest before and after, to perfect methods for identifying burned forest by satellite, and to measure the damage caused by the fires. Wherever possible, our burns are also scheduled during satellite overpasses, to allow collection of remotely...

Neandertal femur suggests competition with hyenas and a shift in landscape use

... transition to the Upper Paleolithic, prior to any appearance of modern humans in Europe. In addition, the cave was a hyena den at about the same time that the humans lived in it, the authors say. Archeological evidence indicates that humans processed carcasses of the same animals as the hyenas, with some anim...

Map of life on Earth could be used on Mars

... flow chart, which can be interpreted to trace the appearance of environmental adaptations across billions of years of evolution. Genes are inherited from parents, but can transfer from one organism to another without reproducing by a process called lateral gene transfer. Modular metabolic genes, which are not...

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