Reference Terms
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Enzyme
Enzymes are proteins that catalyze (i.e. accelerate) chemical reactions. Enzymes are biochemical catalysts. In these reactions, the molecules at the beginning of the process are called substrates, and the enzyme converts these into different molecules, the products. Almost all processes in the cell need enzymes in order to occur at significant rates. Since enzymes are extremely selective for their substrates and speed up only a few reactions from among many possibilities, the set of enzymes made in a cell determines which metabolic pathways occur in that cell.
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Plants & Animals News
February 8, 2026
Feb. 8, 2026 Tiny marine plankton that build calcium carbonate shells play an outsized role in regulating Earth’s climate, quietly pulling carbon from the atmosphere and helping lock it away in the deep ocean. New research shows these microscopic engineers are ...
Feb. 8, 2026 Pumas returning to Patagonia have begun hunting mainland penguins that evolved without land predators. Scientists estimate that more than 7,000 adult penguins were killed in just four years, many of them left uneaten. While the losses are dramatic, ...
Feb. 5, 2026 Kemp’s ridley sea turtles, one of the most endangered sea turtle species on Earth, live in some of the noisiest waters on the planet, right alongside major shipping routes. New research reveals that these turtles are especially sensitive to ...
Feb. 3, 2026 Plants make chemical weapons to protect themselves, and many of these compounds have become vital to human medicine. Researchers found that one powerful plant chemical is produced using a gene that looks surprisingly bacterial. This suggests plants ...
Feb. 3, 2026 Even in some of the most isolated corners of the Pacific, plastic pollution has quietly worked its way into the food web. A large analysis of fish caught around Fiji, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu found that roughly one in three contained ...
Feb. 2, 2026 As demand for critical metals grows, scientists have taken a rare, close look at life on the deep Pacific seabed where mining may soon begin. Over five years and 160 days at sea, researchers documented nearly 800 species, many previously unknown. ...
Feb. 2, 2026 SAR11 bacteria dominate the world’s oceans by being incredibly efficient, shedding genes to survive in nutrient-poor waters. But that extreme streamlining appears to backfire when conditions change. Under stress, many cells keep copying their DNA ...
Feb. 1, 2026 Dinosaur footprints have always been mysterious, but a new AI app is cracking their secrets. DinoTracker analyzes photos of fossil tracks and predicts which dinosaur made them, with accuracy rivaling human experts. Along the way, it uncovered ...
Feb. 1, 2026 Researchers in Bangladesh have identified a bat-borne virus, Pteropine orthoreovirus, in patients who were initially suspected of having Nipah virus but tested negative. All had recently consumed raw date-palm sap, a known pathway for bat-related ...
Jan. 30, 2026 A fast-aging fish is giving scientists a rare, accelerated look at how kidneys grow old—and how a common drug may slow that process down. Researchers found that SGLT2 inhibitors, widely used to treat diabetes and heart disease, preserved kidney ...
Jan. 29, 2026 Small mammals are early warning systems for environmental damage, but many species look almost identical, making them hard to track. Scientists have developed a new footprint-based method that can tell apart nearly indistinguishable species with ...
Jan. 25, 2026 After analyzing 40 years of tree records across the Andes and Amazon, researchers found that climate change is reshaping tropical forests in uneven ways. Some regions are steadily losing tree species, especially where conditions are hotter and ...
Latest Headlines
updated 12:56 pm ET
Feb. 7, 2026 A newly discovered deep-sea creature has become an unlikely Internet star. After appearing in a popular YouTube video, a rare chiton found nearly three miles beneath the ocean surface sparked a ...
Feb. 7, 2026 Fossils from a Moroccan cave have been dated with remarkable accuracy to about 773,000 years ago, thanks to a magnetic signature locked into the surrounding sediments. The hominin remains show a ...
Feb. 7, 2026 Scientists have cracked a key mystery behind spider silk’s legendary strength and flexibility. They discovered that tiny molecular interactions act like natural glue, holding silk proteins together ...
Feb. 4, 2026 Scientists have uncovered a surprising genetic shift that may explain how animals with backbones—from fish and frogs to humans—became so complex. By comparing sea squirts, lampreys, and frogs, ...
Feb. 3, 2026 A newly identified tiny dinosaur, Foskeia pelendonum, is shaking up long-held ideas about how plant-eating dinosaurs evolved. Though fully grown adults were remarkably small and lightweight, their ...
Feb. 1, 2026 Despite growing into the largest animals ever to walk on land, sauropods began life small, exposed, and alone. Fossil evidence suggests their babies were frequently eaten by multiple predators, ...
Jan. 31, 2026 Termites did not evolve complex societies by adding new genetic features. Instead, scientists found that they became more social by shedding genes tied to competition and independence. A shift to ...
Jan. 30, 2026 On a remote Alaskan island, gray wolves are rewriting the rulebook by hunting sea otters — a behavior few scientists ever expected to see. Researchers are now uncovering how these coastal wolves ...
Jan. 28, 2026 What looked like a pearl necklace on a tiny spider turned out to be parasitic mite larvae. Scientists identified the mites as a new species, marking the first record of its family in Brazil. The ...
Jan. 27, 2026 The Ediacara Biota are some of the strangest fossils ever found—soft-bodied organisms preserved in remarkable detail where preservation shouldn’t be possible. Scientists now think their survival ...