RED IS THE NEW GREEN Researchers working with cyanobacteria may have extracted a new variety of chlorophyll that can use more near-infrared light than is typical for oxygenic photosynthetic organisms. The chloroplasts pictured here are in the cells of a moss.

Researchers may have found a new form of chlorophyll, the pigment that plants, algae and cyanobacteria use to obtain energy from light through photosynthesis. Preliminary findings published August 19 in Science suggest that the newly discovered molecule, dubbed chlorophyll f, has a distinct chemical composition when compared with the four known forms of chlorophyll and can absorb more near-infrared light than is typical for the photosynthetic pigments. Chlorophyll, which was extracted from cultures of cyanobacteria and other oxygenic microorganisms, may allow certain photosynthetic life forms to harvest energy from wavelengths of light that many of their competitors cannot use.

By Matt Walker

Editor, Earth News

Bowhead whales have a previously undiscovered ability to smell the air.

The finding could change our understanding of how baleen whales locate prey, as scientist’s suspect the bowhead whales sniff out krill swarms.

The whales' sense of smell was revealed when scientists dissected their bodies and found olfactory hardware linking the brain and nose, and functional protein receptors required to smell. Previously, whales and dolphins were thought to lack the ability. Details are published in the journal Marine Mammal Science.