Nature, through the trial and error of evolution, has discovered a vast diversity of life from what can only presumed to have been a primordial pool of building blocks.

Inspired by this success, a new Biodesign Institute research team, led by John Chaput, is now trying to mimic the process of Darwinian evolution in the laboratory by evolving new proteins from scratch. Using new tricks of molecular biology, Chaput and co-workers have evolved several new proteins in a fraction of the 3 billion years it took nature.

Tracing the evolutionary history of wildlife could improve global habitat conservation, a major Cardiff University study has found.

Researchers in the School of Biosciences analysed the African bushbuck, a common species which lives in most sub-Saharan habitat types to test whether DNA similarity between populations living in different habitats can reveal the similarity of those ecoregions now and in the past.

Restore Earth's energy balance. Feed some astronauts. It could all be possible thanks to a new fungi discovery by Albert Einstein College of Medicine researchers.

Scientists have long assumed that fungi exist mainly to decompose matter into chemicals that other organisms can then use. But researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have found evidence that fungi possess a previously undiscovered talent with profound implications: the ability to use radioactivity as an energy source for making food and spurring their growth.

Not only does exercise make most people feel better and perform physical tasks better, it now appears that exercise – specifically, resistance training -- actually rejuvenates muscle tissue in healthy senior citizens.

A recent study, co-led by Simon Melov and Mark Tarnopolsky, involved before and after analysis of gene expression profiles in tissue samples taken from 25 healthy older men and women who underwent six months of twice weekly resistance training, compared to a similar analysis of tissue samples taken from younger healthy men and women.

A new breakthrough in hydrogen storage technology could remove a key barrier to widespread uptake of non-polluting cars that produce no carbon dioxide emissions.

In the future doctors will be able to find more tumors at an early stage while using a smaller x-ray dose for each examination. Color x-rays offer new possibilities for medical diagnoses. This spring Mid Sweden University is presenting three dissertations in the field of digital color x-rays.

Digital color x-rays are based on the same advanced technology that is used when nuclear physicists look for new elementary particles. The great scientific challenge in constructing a color x-ray camera is to be able to shrink the large-scale detection equipment used by nuclear physicists to the microscopic format.