New research reveals that, rather than being influenced only by environmental conditions, deep subsurface microbial communities can transform because of geological movements. The findings advance our understanding of subsurface microorganisms, which comprise up to half of all living material on the planet.
Researchers discovered that a spot of molecular glue and a timely twist help a bacterial enzyme convert carbon dioxide into carbon compounds 20 times faster than plant enzymes do during photosynthesis. The results stand to accelerate progress toward converting carbon dioxide into a variety of products.
Stanford biologist José Dinneny is studying why one plant grows faster in stressful conditions. His results could help scientists engineer food and biofuel crops to survive in harsher environments.
By comparing the most energy-efficient running speeds of recreational runners in a lab to the preferred, real-world speeds measured by wearable trackers, Stanford scientists found that runners prefer a low-effort pace – even for short distances.
A research collaboration with the Muwekma Ohlone tribe – whose ancestral lands include the Stanford campus – shows a genetic relationship between modern-day Tribe members and individuals buried nearby who lived more than 1,900 years ago.
The Stanford whale biologist discusses a pod of orcas taking down a blue whale – “arguably one of the most dramatic and intense predator-prey interactions on the planet.”
Research finds that the cellular assembly line that produces proteins can stall with age, triggering a snowball effect that increases the output of misfolded proteins. In humans, clumps of misfolded proteins contribute to age-linked Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases.
More than a century of attentive groundskeeping has turned the Stanford campus into a museum of mathematical phylogenetics, says Noah Rosenberg, creator of the Stanford X-Tree Project.
