When millions of tiny organisms decompose dead plant material, they keep the global carbon cycle going. Together with colleagues from the Senckenberg – Leibniz Institution for Biodiversity and Earth System Research (SGN) and Justus Liebig University (JLU) in Giessen, researchers from Goethe University Frankfurt have developed a new method to identify the molecular tools that different species use for this process. Their analysis of over 18,000 species brought surprising discoveries to light: In addition to fungi and bacteria, some invertebrates also evidently have a whole range of such tools at their disposal, while the one or other fungus lost them when it became parasitic.

Climate change is causing the oceans to become notably more acidic. This could become a problem for sharks, as a team of biologists headed by Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU) has discovered. In the scientific journal Frontiers in Marine Science, the research team describes that a more acidic environment weakens the teeth of sharks, causing them to break more easily, which in turn causes the predators to lose their bite.

For decades zebrafish has eclipsed all other fish species in laboratories, but lately other, non-traditional model fish species are also in the spotlight. Amongst them is a once well-studied species of behavioral biology, the paradise fish. According to recent findings, its unique working memory and consistent exploratory strategy reveal behaviors previously thought to be characteristic mainly of mammals. Results published in Communications Biology by researchers from Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) and the HUN-REN Institute of Experimental Medicine (HUN-REN IEM) suggest that the two species, taken together, can provide complementary insights into the workings of the brain.

A research team led by Nick Strausfeld at the University of Arizona made an unexpected discovery: The brain of Jiangfengia, a creature that lived in the lower Cambrian, is very similar to that of living crustaceans. This places the extinct animal in the ancestry of insects and crustaceans, not spiders and their relatives, as had been previously assumed.

RNA-binding proteins use a dual binding mechanism involving zinc finger (ZnF) domains and intrinsically disordered regions (IDR), reports a new study from Institute of Science Tokyo, Japan. Using advanced molecular modeling, the study analyzes a “FUS protein-RNA” complex—revealing how the protein uses its ZnF domain for RNA sequences recognition and its flexible IDR domain for its non-specific interactions. This breakthrough strategy is likely common to nucleic acid binding, offering fresh insights into molecular science.

A new collaborative study between Reichman University and the Technion reveals, for the first time, how living bacteria are able to survive inside dust particles transported through the atmosphere by desert storms originating in the Sahara Desert and Egypt, ultimately reaching Israel.