Overestimated nitrogen availability has led climate models to exaggerate how much plant growth can offset rising CO2 levels. Rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are a major driver of ...

Nitrogen is vital for all known life. Yet most nitrogen on Earth is in the atmosphere as di-nitrogen gas, which many organisms can’t use. Fortunately, there are microbes that can tap into this ...

To reconstruct the C. orbicularis symbiont's metabolism, we sequenced the genome of purified bacteria to provide a basis for subsequent global proteomic analyses. As expected, the symbiont's genome ...

By coaxing soil bacteria into fixing more nitrogen, gene-edited wheat shows how crops might one day sidestep synthetic fertilizers.

If this trait can be transferred successfully, these crops could become self-sufficient in nitrogen. This would reduce the ...

Most organisms require nitrogen to produce biological molecules, such as nucleotides and amino acids, but until recently, only prokaryotes were known to fix nitrogen from the atmosphere. “It’s a very ...

Here’s the thing about nitrogen. It’s essential for life—a key ingredient in both DNA and proteins. It also makes up seventy-eight per cent of the air we breathe. It would be useful for us if we could ...

Scientists shed light on an unexpected partnership: A marine diatom and a bacterium that can account for a large share of nitrogen fixation in vast regions of the ocean. This symbiosis likely plays a ...

Nitrogen is an essential element for living organisms, needed to build DNA, proteins and chlorophyll. Although nitrogen makes up nearly 80% of the air we breathe, it’s availability to plants and ...

Soil microbes remove carbon from the atmosphere and store it underground, revealing an overlooked pathway for storage in ...