By Micaela Gliozzi Human life begins when two cells (egg and sperm), derived from a woman and a man respectively, lose half of their DNA to generate a new cell (calles zygote) with a unique DNA, which rapidly divides in a continuous process culminating in the birth of a child. Thus, nascent life appears as…

By Maria Florencia Decarlini In a previous article on our blog, entitled “Trees too collaborate”, Catherine Belzung wrote that: “It has been shown that the roots of 90% of all plants are linked through the so-called mycorrhizal network, made up of fungi, which transfer water , nutrients (carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus) or protective compounds in case…

By Catherine Belzung Vampire bats such as the Desmodus rotundus that live in Central and South America do not have a good reputation as their alimentation is based exclusively on blood. They live in social groups in some caves or hollow trees. Each night, to provide their menu, they bite larger animals such as dogs or pigs, and…

By Miguel Oliveira Panão All life on Earth is possible because of the Sun’s energy. After capturing its energy, it is wasted, stored, transformed, and transferred. I’m intrigued by the last thing that happens – the transfer of heat. There are three basic ways of transferring heat. The first occurs at a molecular level between…

By Luca Fiorani For sure you know that all matter in the universe is made of particles like protons, neutrons and electrons. Probably you also know that all radiation is made of photons, particles of light. Maybe you even know that fields – gravitational, electric and magnetic ones – are also made of particles, called…

By Antonino Puglisi This post is meant to be a sequel of the one previously published in this blog entitled “A surprising LEGO world” in which I argued that molecules are holistic entities and can never be considered “just-a-bunch-of-atoms”. When a new molecule is formed, in fact, some of its properties are often new and…

By Jozef Klembara It was Richard Owen, a famous English anatomist, a founder of the Natural History Museum in London and contemporary of Darwin, who presented a discovery of the common structural plan of all organisms, the so-called archetype, representing a structural “unity” (unity of organization) of all organisms: “The ideal original or fundamental pattern on…

By Stefania Papa The relationship between yucca moth and yucca plant is very interesting and has a long history. George Engelmann in St. Louis made some first observations in 1892 (Engelmann, 1872). From this data, information about their association has grown at an accelerating pace along several lines of investigation. The moth and the plant depend…

By Catherine Belzung Communication among organisms is a hallmark in nature: it is beneficial to the ecosystems as it helps warnings against predators, or enables collective decision making. Therefore, it is crucial for survival. As communication requires integration of complex signals, it was supposed that this function was a characteristic of complex organisms like pluricellular…