Cryptobiosis, or latent life, is an extraordinary mechanism because of the resilience it gives to organisms that can enter it. Learning the limits of this resilience is important, for example, in the context of astrobiology and whether any forms of terrestrial life are able to survive beyond our planet, said Dr. Weronika Erdmann from Adam Mickiewicz University.
Due to the lack of detailed regulations, it is not possible to use the potential of New Genomic Techniques (NGT) in the EU to obtain improved varieties of crop plants, says biotechnologist Dr. Marek Marzec. In his opinion, NGT plants do not have the potential to 'escape' from cultivation.
The mechanisms of proper heart development, including the natural pacemaker mechanism, have been described by scientists thanks to the analysis of laboratory zebrafish embryos.
An international team of scientists, including a researcher from Poland, have demonstrated for the first time that a group of butterflies flew over the Atlantic Ocean, covering a distance of 4,200 kilometres, Nature Communications reports.
A huge bone found by an angler in Książnice on the bank of the Raba River in Małopolska belonged to an adult mammoth, research has shown. These animals inhabited the entire area of present-day Poland during the Pleistocene, or Ice Age.
As a result of several years of floristic research on Babia Góra National Park, two new species of hawkweed have been identified.
It was considered the strongest evidence for the presence of ceratopsians (horned dinosaurs) outside Asia and North America. The discovery was even described in Nature. Scientists from the Polish Academy of Sciences, however, question this in their research, showing that the fossils belonged to a completely different group of dinosaurs.
Neck elongation is not unusual among extinct reptiles. It usually involves more cervical vertebrae. However, Tanystropheus' extremely long neck consisted of only 13 vertebrae, but they were extremely elongated, show palaeontologists including researchers from the University of Warsaw.
The International Space Station will be the staging area for an experiment with algae that naturally live near volcanoes. The experiment has been developed by a start-up founded by a doctoral candidate from the University of Warsaw. Algae are universal organisms that could be used in the future to produce oxygen for astronauts and perform other important tasks, scientists say.
Baltic pagan tribes sacrificed horses imported from Christianised Scandinavia, according to international research.