All Asia & Oceania articles – Page 3
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NewsWhat dental calculus can tell us about the oral microbiomes of ancient Japan
Microbe DNA from ancient dental calculus offers insights into the past oral microbiomes of the Japanese people, including the phylogeny of the periodontal disease-associated archaeon, Methanobrevibacter oralis.
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NewsAntibiotics drive resistance in waterways - even after they break down
Antibiotics continue to drive resistance to bacteria, even after they are broken down in wastewater treatment plants and discharged into rivers and seas, new research published on World Oceans Day has shown for the first time.
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NewsDigital model guides cleaner biohydrogen production
A research team has developed an enzyme-aware digital model that explains why hydrogen-producing microbes often struggle to grow fast and generate hydrogen efficiently at the same time. The study reveals how limited enzyme resources shape the balance between cell growth, by-product formation, and hydrogen generation.
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NewsHow are chloroplasts communicating with the nucleus? Bacterial enzymes show the way
By utilizing bacterial enzymes that cleave heme molecules at different sites, researchers have developed a method to dissect phytochrome-dependent light and heme retrograde signaling pathways in plants, which have previously been difficult to discuss separately.
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NewsNew study highlights maternal-fetal TORCH infection risk
Researchers have assessed long-term trends in TORCH infections in India, a region where reliable data have been lacking. TORCH includes pathogens that cause toxoplasmosis, rubella, cytomegalovirus (CMV), herpes simplex virus and other infections.
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NewsGene swapping helped build the planet’s decomposers
Researchers have reconstructed the deep history of osmotrophic specialization in eukaryotes. Their findings suggest that four groups of eukaryotes which have specialized in osmotrophy first arose between 720 million and 1 billion years ago and that they share a toolkit of genes involved in osmotrophic functions.
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NewsProfessor Kaneko’s sake and wine earn honors at French Japanese Sake Competition for second consecutive year
At “Kura Master,” a Japanese sake competition held in France for French consumers since 2017, “Aldebaran,” a wine produced from grapes grown in the city of Ibara, in Okayama Prefecture, and supervised by Professor Akihiro Kaneko, won a Gold Award in the Muscat Bailey A category.
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NewsBiochar can reshape how soils respond to warming, but the effect depends on the soil
A new study shows that biochar can change how strongly soil nitrous oxide emissions respond to rising temperatures. But the effect is not one-size-fits-all. The study found that nitrous oxide emissions increased with warming in both agricultural soil and forest soil, but forest soil was more temperature-sensitive than agricultural soil.
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NewsFrom spider silk to science: a new way to access hidden fungal diversity
A new study suggests that spider webs - particularly those incorporating environmental debris - can serve as natural, non-destructive collectors of fungal material in agricultural ecosystems. The findings show that viable fungi can be recovered from these structures, including lineages that may represent previously undocumented diversity.
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NewsIron-modified biochar turns soil oxygen into a cleaner for antibiotic pollution
Antibiotic residues in agricultural soils are an emerging environmental concern, with potential impacts on soil health, crop safety, and the spread of antimicrobial resistance. A new study reports on an iron-modified biochar that helps soil use its own oxygen and iron chemistry to break down sulfamethoxazole.
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NewsScientists map the microbes behind a climate-regulating gas in India’s busiest estuary — a first
When bacteria in the water and sediment break dimethylsulfoniopropionate down, they release dimethylsulfide (DMS), a gas that drifts into the atmosphere and helps form clouds by seeding cloud condensation nuclei. A new paper reports the first-ever study of DMSP concentrations and the bacteria that degrade it along the entire length of the Cochin Estuary.
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NewsLong-term biochar use can help cropland soils store more microbial carbon, but depth matters
A 12-year field study shows that biochar boosts stable microbial carbon in topsoil while reducing it in deeper soil layers, highlighting the need for depth-specific carbon management.
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NewsExtreme adaptation helps Dead Sea single-celled organisms to swim
Researchers have described in detail a structural adaptation supporting one of the Dead Sea’s few hardy inhabitants — a single-celled archaea called Haloarcula marismortui (H. marismortui). They characterized the proteins that form the archaeal filament, a long tail-like structure essential for movement.
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NewsThe right heat makes biochar a better helper for food waste composting
A new study finds that hardwood biochar made at 400 °C best protects nitrogen during food waste digestate composting, offering a practical route to cleaner and higher-quality compost.
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NewsScientists recreate enterovirus infection in a new model of the human intestine
A miniaturized, biomimetic model of the human intestine successfully reproduced long-term enterovirus A71 (EV-A71) infection, report researchers. Using this innovative platform, they shed light on how this virus grows in the intestine without triggering a strong immune response.
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NewsMagnetic biochar gel helps keep arsenic and antimony out of rice
A new study reports a promising strategy for mining-impacted regions: a magnetic silicon-enriched biochar gel that can immobilize both arsenic and antimony in contaminated paddy soil and reduce their accumulation in rice grains.
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NewsZinc deficiency promotes fluconazole-resistant Candida auris virulence
Researchers identified key nutritional and genetic factors that drive the virulence of fluconazole-resistant Candida auris. Under zinc-deficient conditions, these drug-resistant strains gain a fitness advantage, exhibiting increased pathogenicity and resistance to macrophage-mediated killing.
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NewsHow Chinese cabbage fights downy mildew
Researchers focusing on the Brassica rapa–Hyaloperonospora parasitica pathosystem identifies DM459 as an Arg–x–Leu–Arg (RXLR) effector that interacts with BraATG8i, activates autophagy, stimulates salicylic acid (SA) signaling, and enhances resistance to downy mildew.
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NewsRedesigning an elusive bacterial enzyme into an efficient green catalyst
Scientists engineer the CYP107J1 enzyme from Bacillus subtilis into a more practical tool for selective oxidation chemistry.
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NewsAsian scientists unveil 10-year roadmap for building synthetic cells
Scientists from six Asian countries have launched an ambitious 10-year effort to build synthetic cells from non-living molecules, marking the region’s first coordinated push to create an artificial single-celled biological system.