Nitrogen is a key nutrient because it fuels the growth of plankton, which forms the basis of the marine food web. Two ...

A deep-sea microbe uses an exceptionally heat-resistant enzyme to turn atmospheric nitrogen into ammonia at temperatures that ...

Microorganisms can do remarkable things—for example, nitrogen fixation, the conversion of nitrogen gas (N₂) into a form that ...

Nitrogen is one of the primary nutrients critical for the survival of all living organisms. Although nitrogen is very abundant in the atmosphere, it is largely inaccessible in this form to most ...

Fossil plankton shells show that three million years ago, under warmer climate, nitrogen fixation was reduced. • About 3 million years ago: During the warm late Pliocene, nitrogen fixation in the ...

Freshwater and coastal waters may cover just a small portion of the planet, but they turn out to be powerful contributors to nitrogen fixation, a natural process essential to life on Earth. A new ...

Nitrogen is essential for all life on Earth. In the global oceans, however, this element is scarce, and nitrogen availability is therefore critical for the growth of marine life. Some bacteria found ...

A typical day for Jieshun Lin began with a long bus ride to the greenhouses. “For 10 hours each day, I would pull up plants and wash their roots, looking carefully at each individual plant. [Up to] 10 ...

Leguminous crops play a vital role in sustainable agriculture by harnessing atmospheric nitrogen through symbiotic relationships with rhizobia bacteria. This process of biological nitrogen fixation ...

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American If you're enjoying this article, consider ...