Prime minister stresses importance of being cautious, as cases of Delta variant continue to riseCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageBoris Johnson has dropped a heavy hint that the final lifting of lockdown restrictions in England will be delayed by up to a month, as the government prepares to make a final decision over the weekend.The prime minister, who is hosting the G7 summit in Cornwall, is due to announce on Monday whether stage four of his Covid roadmap can go ahead as planned on 21 June. Continue reading...

Turns out the comic books were wrong.

In a discovery that challenges long-held dogma in biology, researchers show that mammalian cells can convert RNA sequences back into DNA, a feat more common in viruses than eukaryotic cells.

Monday’s announcement will come as coronavirus case are rising at fastest rate since second waveCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageThe lifting of all lockdown restrictions in England is likely to be delayed for up to a month from the planned date of 21 June, government sources have told the Guardian.It comes as coronavirus cases in England are rising at their fastest rate since the winter wave. Continue reading...

Cells contain machinery that duplicates DNA into a new set that goes into a newly formed cell. That same class of machines, called polymerases, also build RNA messages, which are like notes copied from the central DNA repository of recipes, so they can be read more efficiently into proteins. But polymerases were thought to only work in one direction DNA into DNA or RNA. This prevents RNA messages from being rewritten back into the master recipe book of genomic DNA. Now, Thomas Jefferson University researchers provide the first evidence that RNA segments can be written back into DNA, which potentially challenges the central dogma in biology and could have wide implications affecting many fields of biology.

The enormous potential of Big Data has already been demonstrated in areas such as financial services and telecommunications. An international team of researchers led by the IPK Leibniz Institute has now tapped the potential of big data for the first time on a large scale for plant research. To this end, data from three projects were used to increase the predictive accuracy for yield in hybrid varieties of wheat.

Georgetown University ecologist Emily Williams first became fascinated with birds not because of their beauty, or their sweet songs. She was riveted by their extraordinary travels.

Plant functional traits are morphological, physiological or phenological properties that affect plant growth, survival, and reproduction. They hold the promise to explain plant species distribution patterns. However, few studies have linked multiple traits to multiple niche dimensions (i.e., light, water, and nutrients).

Most researchers can draw a line from their current field of study to something in their past that first lit the spark—an engineer who had a knack for fixing things, an economics professor who was always good with numbers.

Shifts in weather patterns induced by climate change will increase extreme heat and reduce rainfall across major crop growing regions, with impacts on agricultural production. Will this trigger a decline in the supply of calories needed to sustain the world's growing population?

An important element for the protection of biodiversity is the willingness of the public to support restoration efforts. Using a longitudinal survey design with 1,000 respondents each in France, Germany, Norway and Sweden, scientists led by the Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB) investigated which values, beliefs and norms promote conservation-oriented behavior toward native fishes in rivers. The study shows: Germans have little connection to fish. Rather, the protection of fish in this country is supported by general pro-ecological values and norms. In France, Sweden and Norway, on the other hand, native fish species have great influence on individual conservation-oriented behavior. The results explain why some countries make higher investments in fish species conservation and why fish-related issues are differently represented in political discourse.

A team of researchers from the University of Sydney, the ARC-Plant Protection Research Institute and York University, has found that workers in a species of honeybee found in South Africa reproduce by making near-perfect clones of themselves. In their paper published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the group describes their study of the bees and what they learned about them.

With Oskar Aszmann and his team at the Department of Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgery, MedUni Vienna has long been regarded as a world leader in bionic limb reconstruction. It was only last year that the world's first fully integrated bionic arm prosthesis was developed at MedUni Vienna. This is ready-to-use and is described as "Plug and Play." Although all bionic aids have so far been used in humans, the technique known as osseointegration (direct skeletal attachment) has now been used for the very first time in a bearded vulture—the creature was given a new foot. A paper on this ground-breaking procedure has been published in Scientific Reports.

Frogs have been around for about 140 million years, since dinosaurs roamed the Earth, and are found in most moist corners of the world. IUCN has assessed 6,340 species of these tailless and smooth-bodied amphibians, and almost one in ten of them are classified as Critically Endangered.

Think of University of Florida scientists Nathan Boyd and Arnold Schumann a bit like surgeons. Except in this case, their operating room is a strawberry field.

As the visual evidence of climate change continues to shine a glaring light on a huge problem around the globe, scientists studying at several National Science Foundation (NSF) Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) sites are tackling the issue in part by examining long-term changes in the diversity and abundance of small mammals to understand their vulnerabilities to climate change.

The world's giant kelp forests—vital marine wildernesses as important to Earth's ecology as rainforests and coral reefs—are being mapped by a team of international scientists.

How does our gut respond and adapt to changing conditions? Where does this fundamental and critical flexibility come from? Technion scientists are unraveling the genius of the gut's microbiome, through microbiota, all the way to genetic inversion.

A team of Northwestern Medicine investigators has discovered a set of intracellular mechanisms that support the polarized function of the skin's outermost layer, the epidermis, according to findings published in Current Biology.

To save the planet, the world needs to tackle the crises of climate change and species loss together, taking measures that fix both and not just one, United Nations scientists said.