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An article published in the journal Scientific Reports describes how researchers analyzed biofilm produced by bacteria found in the El Medano hot springs, located in Chile in the central Andes, and concluded that one of its key ingredients can be used to develop natural additives for the pharmaceutical and food industries. The biofilm ingredient in question is an exopolysaccharide (EPS), a cluster of extracellular carbohydrate polymers produced by the thermotolerant Med1 strain of the [...]

Tardigrades are microscopic invertebrates measuring between 0.2 mm and 1.1 mm in length. They are close relatives of arthropods (spiders, insects, crustaceans), and can live in wide variety of environments. Yet little is known about them. Many species were described in the twentieth century when few traits were thought necessary to differentiate species, and the molecular tools used today to compare one or more genes did not exist. For this reason, in a study published in the Zoological [...]

The abstract in PubMed or at the publisher’s site is linked when available and will open in a new window. Papers deriving from NASA support: Bailey SM, Kunkel SR, Bedford JS, Cornforth MN. The central role of cytogenetics in radiation biology. Radiat Res. 2024 Jul 10. Online ahead of print. PIs: S.M. Bailey, M.N. Cornforth Journal Impact Factor: 2.5 Funding: “The authors are indebted to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) HRP program for supporting these [...]

Editor’s note: as we build the hand held sensors – tricorders – that we take along on Away Team mission on other worlds we’ll need to build in as much functionality as possible. Absorption spectroscopy is an analytical chemistry tool that can determine if a particular substance is present in a sample by measuring the intensity of the light absorbed as a function of wavelength. Measuring the absorbance of an atom or molecule can provide important information about [...]

The rhythms of activity in all biological organisms, both plants and animals, are closely linked to the gravitational tides created by the orbital mechanics of the Sun-Earth-Moon system. This truth has been somewhat neglected by scientific research but is foregrounded in a study by Cristiano de Mello Gallep at the University of Campinas (UNICAMP) in the state of São Paulo, Brazil, and Daniel Robert at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom. An article on the study is published [...]

Press Release - Source: FUNDAÇÃO DE AMPARO À PESQUISA DO ESTADO DE SÃO PAULO Brazilian researchers have reconstructed the evolutionary history of amoebae and demonstrated that at the end of the Precambrian period, at least 750 million years ago, life on Earth was much more diverse than suggested by classic theory. The study, which was supported by São Paulo Research Foundation - FAPESP, revealed eight new ancestral lineages of Thecamoebae, the largest group in Amoebozoa. Thecamoebians [...]

Jupiter's icy moon Europa is a major target of astrobiology research in light of the possibility that it offers a habitable environment in the Solar System. Under its ice crust, estimated to be 10 km thick, is an ocean of liquid water of over 100 km deep. A huge source of energy deriving from gravitational interaction with Jupiter keeps this water warm. Theoretical research to evaluate the microbial habitability of Europa using data collected from analogous environments on Earth has been [...]

A New Physical Model Explains The Origin Of Earth's Water. Equipped with Newton's law of universal gravitation (published in Principia 330 years ago) and powerful computational resources (used to apply the law to more than 10,000 interacting bodies), a young Brazilian researcher and his former postdoctoral supervisor have just proposed a new physical model to explain the origin of water on Earth and the other Earth-like objects in the Solar System. André Izidoro, from the School of [...]