Vly News - Professional news Platform

Newswise — Tracing the forested wetlands of Bulgaria some six million years ago, a new species of panda has been discovered by scientists who claim that it is currently the last known and “most developed” European giant panda. Excavated from the bowels of Bulgaria’s National Museum of Natural History, two tooth fossils originally discovered in the eastern European country in the late 1970s, provide new evidence of a sizable relative of the modern giant panda. Unlike today’s iconic black and white bears, they did not rely on pure bamboo. “Although not a direct ancestor of the modern genus of giant pandas, it is a close relative,” explains Museum Professor Nikolai Spassov, whose findings were published today in a peer-reviewed publication. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology . “This discovery demonstrates how little we still know about the primeval realm and demonstrates also that historic discoveries in paleontology can yield unexpected results, even today.” The upper carnival teeth, an

Newswise — Genome sequencing, in which scientists use laboratory methods to determine the genetic makeup of a particular organism, is becoming a common practice in insect research. A greater understanding of insect biology helps scientists better manage insects, both those that benefit ecosystems and those that damage food supplies and threaten human health by carrying disease. Researchers have developed a workflow method, called Fanflow4Insects, which describes the function of genes in insects. In functional annotations, scientists collect information about the biological identity of genes. The team’s new method uses transcribed sequence information as well as genome and protein sequence databases. With Fanflow4Insects, the team has annotated functional information of Japanese stick insects and silkworms, including gene expression and sequence analysis. The functional annotation information provided by their workflow will greatly expand the possibilities of entomological research

Newswise — Nitriles, a class of organic molecules with a cyano group, that is, a carbon atom bonded by an unsaturated triple bond to a nitrogen atom, are typically toxic. But paradoxically, they are also key precursors to molecules essential for life, such as ribonucleotides, which are made up of nucleobases or ‘letters’ A, U, C, and G joined by ribose and phosphate groups, which together make up RNA. Now, a team of researchers from Spain, Japan, Chile, Italy, and the US is showing that various nitriles occur in interstellar space in the G+0.693-0.027 molecular cloud, near the center of the Milky Way. Dr Víctor M. Rivilla, a researcher at the Center for Astrobiology of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and the National Institute of Aerospace Technology (INTA) in Madrid, Spain, and first author of the new study, said: “Here we show that the chemistry that occurs in the medium interstellar capable of efficiently forming multiple nitriles, which are key molecular precursors o