A major mystery about the origins of life may be resolved if a new hypothesis holds up, says  a study published in Nature.   Two Université de Montréal scientists have proposed a new idea for how a 'universal molecular machine', the ribosome, might have managed to self-assemble as a critical step in the genesis of all life on Earth.

Want to get a lot of money thrown at immunology?   Show that sex can not only be exhausting, if you do it right, it can also cause drops in the immune system.

According to a study in Journal of Evolutionary Biology, when fruit flies mate the females' genes are activated to roughly the same extent as when an immune reaction starts.   Using a combination of behavioral studies and genomic technology, so-called microarrays, researchers at Uppsala University can show how fruit fly females are affected by mating.

"We monitor how genetic expression is impacted by mating and show that the most common process that is affected is the immune defense system," says Ted Morrow at the Department of Ecology and Evolution, Uppsala University.

The world economy is an elaborate, complex system so a recession can have unforeseen effects all along the food chain - even among sharks, though that is a good thing for people.

Shark attacks worldwide in 2008 dipped to their lowest level in five years, a sign that Americans may be forgoing vacation trips to the beach, said George Burgess, ichthyologist and director of the International Shark Attack File, which is housed at the University of Florida.

According to the latest statistics released today, the total number of shark attacks declined from 71 in 2007 to 59 in 2008, the fewest since 2003, when there were 57, said Burgess, who works at the Florida Museum of Natural History on the UF campus.

As we mark the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth, there is much focus on evolution in animals and plants. But new research shows that for the countless billions of tiniest creatures – microbes – large-scale evolution was completed 2.5 billion years ago.

All living organisms need nitrogen, a basic component of amino acids and proteins. But for atmospheric nitrogen to be usable, it must be "fixed," or converted to a biologically useful form. Some microbes turn atmospheric nitrogen into ammonia, a form in which the nitrogen can be easily absorbed by other organisms.

A new gene that provides resistance to a fungal disease responsible for millions of hectares of lost wheat yield has been discovered by scientists from the US and Israel.  Resistance to stripe rust has previously been achieved using genes that are specific to single races of the disease. Unfortunately, each of these genes has had limited durability in the field because the pathogen has mutated to overcome them.

In the paper to be published in Science Express tomorrow, the international team of scientists report finding a novel type of gene in wild wheat that is absent in modern pasta and bread wheat varieties.

Coffee shrubs, both in themselves and because they are most often cultivated in the shade of large trees, can have a positive impact on plant and animal diversity in those parts of the landscape that are deforested and dominated by agriculture.

What constitutes a dilemma for consumers wishing to shop ecologically is that when coffee is grown in a forest, which is also common, the impact on diversity is negative, say researchers at the Department of Botany, Stockholm University, in Sweden, who recently published two articles about the role of coffee cultivation in conserving plants and animals in Ethiopia, the original home of coffee.