125 articles from FRIDAY 9.9.2022

Chemists reveal first pathway for selenium insertion into natural products

Researchers reveal a novel and widespread pathway for selenium insertion that involves two unusual selenium-carbon forming enzymes. The authors named them selenosugar synthase (SenB) and selenoneine synthase (SenA). Their work expands the known boundaries of selenium metabolism, previously thought to be confined to selenoprotein and selenonucleic acid biopolymers, which consist of primary...

Is climate change disrupting maritime boundaries?

Coral reef islands and their reefs -- found across in the Indo-Pacific -- naturally grow and shrink due to complex biological and physical processes that have yet to be fully understood. Now, climate change is disrupting them further, leading to new uncertainties for legal maritime zones and small island states. Rising sea levels, coupled with the natural variability of atoll islands and coral...

Longer, hotter and more frequent heat waves in cities

Hot days followed by sweltering nights without any temperature relief in between might become a new norm towards the end of the 21st century. Researchers have analyzed the frequency, intensity and length of such extreme events for five Swiss cities. Lugano and Geneva would be most affected.

Newly identified genes may help protect crops against flooding, researchers say

Flooding is a global risk, according to the World Bank, with the lives and property of billions of people threatened. Even more people are at risk of starvation as a knock-on effect of floods: the waters can drown crops. Now, researchers are getting closer to identifying the molecular processes underlying how floods deprive plants of oxygen -- and how to engineer hardier crops.

Circalunar clocks: Using the right light

How animals are able to interpret natural light sources to adjust their physiology and behavior is poorly understood. Researchers have now revealed that a molecule called L-cryptochrome (L-Cry) has the biochemical properties to discriminate between different moon phases, as well as between sun- and moonlight. Their findings show that L-Cry can interpret moonlight to entrain the monthly...

The origins of donkey domestication

The donkey has shaped the history of humankind, both as a source of power for farm work, and of transportation in sometimes hard to reach areas. To understand the origins of it domestication, scientists built and analyzed the most complete panel of genomes ever studied for this animal. The researchers reveal that the donkey was first domesticated in Africa in 5,000 B.C.E.

Climate change is affecting drinking water quality

The water stored in reservoirs ensures our supply of drinking water. Good water quality is therefore important -- but is at significant risk due to climate change. In a model study of the Rappbode reservoir in the Harz region, a research team demonstrated how the climate-related disappearance of forests in the catchment area for Germany's largest drinking water reservoir can affect water quality....

Tumors: Not just a backup -- the dual specificity of UBA6

Researchers have unveiled the crystal structures of UBA6 in complex with either ATP or the ubiquitin-like protein FAT10. These results provide the foundation to study the individual roles of UBA6 towards the attachment of either ubiquitin or FAT10 to target proteins and the downstream cellular pathways with possible implications for the etiology of certain tumors.

Walking robots could aid research on other planets

Today NASA uses wheeled rovers to navigate the surface of Mars and conduct planetary science, but research involving Texas A&M University scientists will test the feasibility of new surface-exploration technology: walking robots.

The long and short of a supergene for efficient pollination

Scientists have solved the century-old mystery of a supergene that causes efficient cross-pollination in flowers. The results show that sequence length variation at the DNA level is important for the evolution of two forms of flowers that differ in the length of their sexual organs. The study is published today in Current Biology.

Machine learning model can evaluate the effectiveness of management strategies for wildfire prevention

Wildfires are a growing threat in a world shaped by climate change. Now, researchers at Aalto University have developed a neural network model that can accurately predict the occurrence of fires in peatlands. They used the new model to assess the effect of different strategies for managing fire risk and identified a suite of interventions that would reduce fire incidence by 50–76%.

Team investigates sex-determination mechanisms in birds

Scientists have known that sex-determination in vertebrates happens in the germ cells, a body's reproductive cells, and the somatic cells, the cells that are not reproductive cells. Yet they have not fully understood the mechanisms by which it happens. To better grasp the process of the germ cell's sex determination, a research team has analyzed germ cells in chickens using RNA-sequencing to...

NASA's AIRS instrument records Typhoon Hinnamnor before landfall

NASA's Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument aboard the Aqua satellite captured imagery of Typhoon Hinnamnor in the West Pacific Ocean just before 2 p.m. local time on Sept. 5. Typhoon Hinnamnor was one of the strongest in South Korea's recorded history, dropping some 40 inches (102 centimeters) of rain and unleashing record winds.