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Categories: Biology: Genetics, Ecology: Sea Life

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Surprisingly, genome comparisons have failed to resolve a major question in animal evolution: Which living animals are the descendants of the earliest animals to evolve in the world's oceans? Scientists performed a detailed chromosomal analysis that comes down definitively in favor of comb jellies, or ctenophores, as the most recent common ancestor of all animals, or the sister taxa to all animals. Sponges evolved later.

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Pain is good. It's the body's way to keep an animal from harming itself or repeating a dangerous mistake. But sometimes the debilitating sensation can get in the way. So evolution has devised ways to tamp that response down under certain circumstances.

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A new study adds to an emerging, radically new picture of how bacterial cells continually repair faulty sections of their DNA.

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Researchers investigated how the jaw shape of sharks has changed over the course of evolution. Their conclusion: in the most widespread shark species, the jaws show relatively little variation in shape over millions of years; most variable jaws were found for deep-sea sharks.

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The deadly hospital pathogen Acinetobacter baumannii can live for a year on a hospital wall without food and water. Then, when it infects a vulnerable patient, it resists antibiotics as well as the body's built-in infection-fighting response. The World Health Organization (WHO) recognizes it as one of the three top pathogens in critical need of new antibiotic therapies. Now, an international team, led by Macquarie University researchers Dr. Ram Maharjan and Associate Professor Amy Cain, have discovered how the superbug can survive harsh environments and then rebound, causing deadly infections. They have found a single protein that acts as a master regulator. When the protein is damaged, the bug loses its superpowers allowing it to be controlled, in a lab setting. The research is published this month in Nucleic Acids Research.

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Researchers have mapped out what a commonly-used form of phage looks like, which will help design better uses in future.

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Inspired by clam fishermen reports, researchers used passive acoustic telemetry to gauge the interactions between two highly mobile rays. They monitored the tagged rays in the wild over two years to see how often and when they visited clam leases, designated underwater locations used to produce hard clams of all sizes from littlenecks to chowders. Results provide both good news and bad news for clammers. Rays spent even more time in these clam lease sites than clammers reported or suspected, but it's not necessarily where they prefer hanging out.

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Scientists have precisely identified base pairs of the human genome that remained consistent over millions of years of mammalian evolution, and which play a crucial role in human disease. The team analyzed the genomes of 240 mammals, including humans and identified base pairs that were 'constrained' -- meaning they remained generally consistent -- across mammal species over the course of evolution. The most constrained base pairs in mammals were over seven times more likely to be causal for human disease and complex trait, and over 11 times more likely when researchers looked at the most constrained base pairs in primates alone.

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Researchers have examined a specific type of stem cell with an intracellular toolkit to determine which cells are most likely to create effective cell therapies.

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A new study has found humpback whales sing louder when the wind is noisy, but don't have the same reaction to boat engines.

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A new group of mitochondrial viruses confined to the arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi Glomeromycotina may represent an ancestral lineage of mitoviruses.

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In the autumn, when right whales swim towards the coasts of South Africa, they ought to be fat and stuffed full. But in recent years, they have become thinner because their food is disappearing with the melting sea ice.

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Researchers are working to identify genes that influence horses' tendency to react to perceived danger.

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Throughout the ocean, billions upon billions of plant-like microbes make up an invisible floating forest. As they drift, the tiny organisms use sunlight to suck up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Collectively, these photosynthesizing plankton, or phytoplankton, absorb almost as much CO2 as the world’s terrestrial forests. A measurable fraction of their carbon-capturing muscle comes from Prochlorococcus — an emerald-tinged free-floater that is the most abundant phytoplankton in the oceans today. New research suggests the microbe's ancient coastal ancestors colonized the ocean by rafting out on chitin particles.

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Scalloped hammerhead sharks hold their breath to keep their bodies warm during deep dives into cold water where they hunt prey such as deep sea squids. This discovery provides important new insights into the physiology and ecology of a species that serves as an important link between the deep and shallow water habitats.

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There have been heated debates over the size of Jurassic animals. The speculation was set to continue, but now a chance discovery in an Oxfordshire museum has led to palaeontologists publishing a paper on a Jurassic species potentially reaching a whopping 14.4 meters -- twice the size of a killer whale.

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Surveying the body sizes of Earth's living organisms, researchers found that the planet's biomass -- the material that makes up all living organisms -- is concentrated in organisms at either end of the size spectrum.

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Comparing individual cells across corn, sorghum, and millet reveals evolutionary differences among these important cereal crops, according to a new study. The findings bring researchers closer to pinpointing which genes control important agricultural traits such as drought tolerance, which will help scientists faced with a changing climate adapt crops to drier environments.

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The theory that water-breathing animals such as fish will shrink due to global warming has been called into question by a new study.

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One of the basic and crucial embryonic processes to unfold in virtually every living organism is the formation of hollow, tubular structures that go on to form blood vessels or a digestive tract, and through branching and differentiation, complex organs including the heart and kidneys. This study illuminates fundamental design principles of tubulogenesis for all chordates, including mammals.