Meteor impacts may have helped spark life on Earth, creating hot, chemical-rich environments where the first living cells could take shape, according to research integrated by a recent Rutgers University graduate.

“No one knows, from a scientific perspective, how life could have been formed from an early Earth that had no life,” said Shea Cinquemani, who earned her bachelor’s degree in marine biology and fisheries management from the Rutgers School of Environmental and Biological Sciences in May 2025. “How does something come from nothing?” Cinquemani is the lead author of a scientific review, published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Marine Science and Engineering, examining where life may have first formed on Earth. The paper focuses on hydrothermal vents, places where hot, mineral-rich water flows through rock and emerges into surrounding water, creating the chemical conditions and energy gradients needed for complex reactions.

The discovery of changes to a 200-million-year-old gene in a mutant clownfish with a unique pattern provides a central clue to the mystery of how nature can create sharply defined boundaries: clear communication. This new research upends our understanding of the mathematical rules that pigmentation cells follow, and suggests a common mechanism shared across species.

An international team of researchers has investigated the biting capabilities of extinct predatory marine reptiles, revealing how these formidable predators could coexist within the same ecosystem. This work sheds new light on the hunting strategies of long-extinct predators that dominated the seas during the Age of Dinosaurs.

A machine-learning strategy has generated a new class of ultra-high strength and ductility steel for 3D printing that costs less, resists rust, and requires only a fraction of the usual processing time.

Researchers from the University of Maine, in partnership with the Maine Department of Marine Resources, analyzed more than two decades of fishery survey data from the Gulf of Maine to assess how environmental change is reshaping coastal marine ecosystems. The study identified an increase in bottom and surface water temperatures between 2010 and 2012 and used that shift to compare ecosystem conditions before and after the warming period. The researchers found that many species are moving deeper and farther northeast, while the community of dominant, fishery-relevant species has become less diverse. The work also evaluates how environmental change may influence the effectiveness of long-running fishery surveys and offers a framework for adapting monitoring methods used to guide science-based management of key marine resources.

Oxygen is generally harmful to many photosynthetic bacteria; however, certain marine purple nonsulfur bacteria can grow even under oxic conditions. Researchers at University of Tsukuba used cryo-electron microscopy to visualize the structure of the protein complex responsible for photosynthesis in one such bacterium, Rhodovulum sulfidophilum. Their analysis uncovered a previously unrecognized membrane protein and revealed structural features that could explain how this organism achieves efficient energy conversion despite the presence of oxygen.

Ocean Discovery League (ODL) announces the launch of the Global Deep Sea Exploration Goals, an ambitious international effort to visually explore 10,000 strategically selected locations across the deep seafloor. When completed, this initiative will nearly double the number of unique seafloor locations ever visually observed and produce the first globally representative visual dataset of the deep ocean floor. 

As biologists know, nature can take its sweet time explaining itself. Andrew Gillis, associate scientist at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), has been investigating how the paired fins of fishes evolved for nearly 20 years - ever since he was a PhD student with Neil Shubin at the University of Chicago. A new study from Gillis and the MBL-UChicago Graduate Research Fellowship Program doesn’t quite put the matter to rest – but it gives important insight to a broader question in evolutionary biology.