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Many bacteria can adopt different lifestyles: in a free-living state, they are virulent and cause disease; in a surface-attached community, they are less virulent but may go unnoticed. How is this ‘decision’ made?
Quaoar, a large body in the Kuiper belt, has crystalline water ice on its surface, yet conditions there should favour amorphous ice. Does this mean that resurfacing has taken place — perhaps even volcanism?
Understanding how early auditory memories are laid down could help to explain their role in vocal development. Some ingenious experiments in birds provide fresh ideas about how such memories are represented.
Chickens have been an invaluable model organism for decades. Their usefulness in research, from genomics to breeding, will further increase with the sequencing of the genome of one chicken species.
A long climatic record shows that episodic wet periods in northeastern Brazil are linked to distant climate anomalies. The ocean–atmosphere system can evidently undergo rapid and global reorganization.
Ion channels controlled by sound underlie the sense of hearing. Having long eluded researchers, the first such mammalian channel has now been identified in the mouse inner ear.
The protein clathrin forms lattice-like coats on transport vesicles that bud from cell membranes. High-resolution models of the lattice reveal interactions involved in its disassembly once the vesicles have formed.
Evidence of unexpected complexity in an ancient community in Uruguay is a further blow to the conventional view of prehistoric development in marginal areas of lowland South America.
The European heatwave of 2003: was it merely a rare meteorological event or a first glimpse of climate change to come? Probably both, is the answer, and the anthropogenic contribution can be quantified.
It's generally been thought that, during cell division, only proteins are necessary to assemble the machine that segregates chromosomes. But a new molecular requirement has been discovered.
To reproduce, cells must copy their genetic material and distribute the replicas into two daughter cells. A self-perpetuating molecular oscillator regulates periodic transitions between these two processes.