Rice lab dives deep for DNA’s secrets
August 27, 2021
Structural biologist Yang Gao receives a five-year National Institutes of Health grant to detail how complex protein chains replicate DNA and fix errors on the fly. What they find could help treat genomic disease, including cancer.
Fungi embrace fundamental economic theory as they engage in trading
June 29, 2021
HOUSTON – (June 29, 2021) – When you think about trade and market relationships, you might think about brokers yelling at each other on the floor of a stock exchange on Wall Street. But it seems one of the basic functions of a free market is quietly practiced by fungi.
Popularity runs in families
June 7, 2021
f identical versions of 20 people lived out their lives in dozens of different worlds, would the same people be popular in each world?
Bacteria have sensors to shut toxin down
May 26, 2021
Researchers at Rice University and the University of Idaho helped identify a protein that senses and binds to formaldehyde to tell cells that toxic formaldehyde is building up.
Does selfishness evolve? Ask a cannibal
March 25, 2021
Biologists have used one of nature's most prolific cannibals to show how social structure affects the evolution of selfish behavior. Researchers showed they could drive the evolution of less selfish behavior in Indian meal moths with habitat changes that forced larval caterpillars to interact more often with siblings.
Corals may need their predators' poop
March 23, 2021
Fish that dine on corals may pay it forward with poop. Rice University marine biologists found high concentrations of living symbiotic algae in the feces of coral predators on reefs in Mo'orea, French Polynesia.