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Potentially huge amounts of water could be carried deep within the Earth by subducting oceanic crust. But it seems that most of that water is released, fuelling volcanism above subduction zones.
Viruses must mutate to survive in the face of attack by their host's immune system. A new model suggests that the viral mutation rate is optimized in an evolutionary trade-off between adaptability and genomic integrity.
An HIV-infected patient who was being treated with anti-retroviral drugs in a 'stop–start' protocol has become infected with a second HIV strain, raising questions about both the treatment strategy and vaccine development.
A gene has been isolated that controls the number of symbiotic nitrogen-fixing nodules in legumes. Its similarity to a well-characterized regulatory gene in Arabidopsis provides clues about its action.
The Per2 gene is a core component of the circadian clock in mammals. It now seems that the mouse Per2 gene is also involved in suppressing tumours, through other genes that affect cell proliferation and death.
Newly developed nanomaterials are proving useful in many fields, but materials that make strong permanent magnets are difficult to devise. Progress has been made using a self-assembled mixture of nanoparticles.
If laser light is shone on a solution, the crystal structure that forms depends on the light polarization, and the more intense the laser, the greater the probability of crystal nucleation. The challenge now is to work out why this is.
Osmium isotopes record evidence for 2.5-billion-year-old mantle beneath the Azores. The origin of this ancient mantle has implications for the nature and timescale of mantle convection.
A key question about evolution is how the first informational molecules — thought to be an early form of life — could generate efficient self-replication machinery. The problem is tackled in new computer simulations.
The identification of a transport mechanism for boron in plant roots provides a surprising connection with transport systems in other, very different settings, such as the kidney.
No statistical documentation of objects of a certain size that enter Earth's atmosphere has hitherto been available. Analysis of data from US government satellites has bridged the gap.
It is no mean feat for organisms to make and maintain their organs. The complex cellular and molecular processes involved are illustrated by two studies of the proteins that participate in producing a colon.
New observations suggest that earthquakes on land are only 'skin-deep', confined to the Earth's outermost layer of crust. This has prompted a rethink of what gives the tectonic plates their strength.
It is more than a decade since the discovery that vertebrate Hox genes are arranged and expressed in the same order as the body parts they help to produce. New work looks at how this is achieved in fingers and toes.
