Plants need nitrogen to grow. Many legumes meet this need through a symbiotic relationship: They harbor bacteria that fix ...

Securing sustainable food supplies is a key challenge for long-term human exploration and potential habitation of the moon. The moon's soil contains no organic material, and essential plant nitrogen ...

A new research initiative led by associate professor of bacteriology Betül Kaçar is positioned to transform agriculture and address some of the world’s most pressing ecological and economic challenges ...

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 ...

The shrinking sea ice in the Arctic Ocean is, overall, a disaster. But paradoxically, the melting of the ice can also fuel the engine of the Arctic food chains: algae. Algae are the main food source ...

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 ...

Biological nitrogen fixation (BNF) underpins the fertility and resilience of tropical forests by converting atmospheric N₂ into plant-available forms. In these ecosystems, both symbiotic associations ...

Nitrogen fixation is surprisingly high in the ocean's coastal waters and may play a larger role than expected in carbon dioxide uptake, a new study shows. The findings -- based on thousands of samples ...

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 ...

After more than a decade of research and collaboration, researchers from Michigan Technological University, Baylor University and Boston University have discovered that inland and coastal aquatic ...

Nitrogen fixation in soil is a microbial-mediated process that converts atmospheric dinitrogen into forms accessible to plants, profoundly influencing terrestrial productivity, nutrient cycling and ...

Scientists have developed a uranium-based complex that allows nitrogen fixation reactions to take place in ambient conditions. The work lays the foundation to develop new processes for synthesizing ...