Nitrogen is essential for life. It's needed to build proteins, DNA and many other components of cells. Although nitrogen gas makes up almost 80% of Earth's atmosphere, most organisms cannot use it ...

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 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 ...

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 ...

When we think of the atmosphere and its necessity in sustaining life, we are thinking of oxygen and for plants, carbon dioxide. There is another chemical, though, a clear, odorless and tasteless gas ...

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 ...

Biological nitrogen fixation is a cornerstone of terrestrial nitrogen cycling, traditionally attributed to bacterial nitrogenase activity. However, the potential contribution of rhizospheric viruses ...

Saint Louis University researchers have revealed an unexpected nitrogenase supercomplex in an ancient methanogen, a ...

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 ...

I was taken back a significant period of years by the article in C&EN on nitrogen fixation as a potential answer to the massive overuse of fertilizers (July 31, 2023, page 24). The underlying reasons ...

NORFOLK, Va. — When most people think of lightning, they picture bright flashes in the sky or the rumble of thunder that follows. But lightning does more than put on a show during storms: it helps ...