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Prevailing wisdom says the adult brain cannot learn to see if it had no visual stimulation during childhood, but blind people in India seem to be breaking all the rules. Apoorva Mandavilli reports.
Among their many talents, bacteria are the world's best electrochemists, creating a life-powering flow of electrons in a startling range of conditions. In the first of two features, Nick Lane asks what limits, if any, constrain this ability. In the second, Charlotte Schubert meets the people trying to put this microbial ingenuity to practical use.
Alternative ways to develop diagnostic tools for use in resource-poor settings can, and do, exist, argue Martine Usdin, Martine Guillerm and Pierre Chirac of Doctors without Borders.
Prokaryote: gene-sequence comparisons show the tree of life consists of bacteria, eukarya and archaea. The use of the term ‘prokaryote’ fails to recognize that an idea about life's origins has been proved wrong.
A spore-forming bacterium can escape from social collapse and extinction with a single mutation that has a dramatic effect. Here is evidence that a cooperative system can recover from the very brink of destruction.
Three planets of Neptune mass have been discovered orbiting a Sun-like star known to have an asteroid belt. Exquisite measurements suggest that the search for habitable planets might be easier than assumed.
As bacteria become resistant to existing drugs, there is a need for antibiotics with new modes of action. Such a compound has been found, and it works by binding to an intermediate in the catalytic cycle of its target.
When it's an insulator, of course. Materials that should in theory conduct electricity — but don't — are well known, but the anomalous behaviour of one material has caused particular head-scratching.
Keratin proteins perform several functions in skin cells, including those of providing mechanical support and protection against injury. But it seems they also have a more active part to play in healing wounds.
Ultracold plasmas blur the classical boundaries between the different states of matter. Newly observed electron-density waves could become useful probes of how electrons behave in this exotic regime.
A diode that emits light at a shorter wavelength than ever before shows huge — albeit destructive — technological promise. But further work is needed to ensure that this promise is fulfilled.
The social activities and organization of bacteria are crucial to their ecological success. But it is only in recent years that we have begun to study these secret societies.
Simulations show that the system of three Neptune-mass planets is in a dynamically stable configuration, with theoretical calculations favouring a mainly rocky composition for both inner planets, but a significant gaseous envelope surrounding a rocky/icy core for the outer planet.
The development of a compact, solid-state light-emitting diode (LED) that emits at 210 nanometres — the shortest wavelength yet achieved for any type of LED — represents an important step towards achieving exciton-related light-emitting devices and replacing inefficient gas light sources with solid-state light sources.
Reconstructions and observations of Earth's surface temperature are used to examine variability at scales from annual to Milankovitch (23 and 41 kyr) cycles and find that temperature variability is linked at all timescales in response to deterministic solar forcing.
Seismic tomography of the D″ region beneath the Caribbean reveals a 100-km vertical step in an otherwise flat D″ shear velocity discontinuity and localized low velocities at the edge of the slab material, which may involve upwellings caused by the slab laterally displacing a thin hot thermal boundary layer.
Discovery of a new type of embryo sac in the plant Amborella — the sole living representative of the most ancient angiosperm lineage, and a true ‘living fossil’ — sheds light on a period of experimentation in the early evolution and origin of flowering plants.
Hydrothermal tubeworms are nutritionally dependent on their bacterial symbionts, but the larvae are symbiont-free and must be colonized anew each generation — the bacteria reach their symbiotic niche through infection of and migration through the skin, which is accompanied by massive apoptosis of host tissue.
A new class of antibiotics that targets bacterial lipid biosynthesis is isolated from Streptomyces platensis, and demonstrates potent in vitro and in vivo activity against Gram-positive bacteria — including methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus species.
A cytoskeletal protein found inside specific epithelial cells, keratin 17, participates in the activation of protein synthesis under conditions calling for rapid cell growth, such as wound repair.
Cleavage of the 5′ site of introns requires an unusual composite active site with the catalytic residues coming from Sen2, and the cation π sandwich coming from Sen34.