Some bacteria are able to tap into unusual sources of nutrients in the surface water of the oceans. This enables them to increase their primary production and extract more carbon dioxide from the ...

Northwestern University researchers are actively overturning the conventional view of iron oxides as mere phosphorus "sinks." A critical nutrient for life, most phosphorus in the soil is organic—from ...

Phosphorus is a key element for all life on Earth. For decades, researchers thought that, in nature, only enzymes could transform organic phosphorus—phosphates within biomolecules—into its ...

Iron oxide in soil performs the same transformation as plants and microbes that are known to secrete enzymes to transform organic phosphorus into bioavailable inorganic phosphorus. Northwestern ...

Instead, the process chemicals needed to convert the white phosphorus are recyclable. "Economic factors still stand in the way of industrial application of the process, however a rethink is currently ...

Phosphorus is a nutrient most people rarely think about. Yet it touches almost every aspect of our lives—the food we eat and the water we drink. One of its most common uses is in the form of ...

Infinite vastness: Gases are constantly exchanged between the ocean and the atmosphere. The study presented here shows how tiny marine organisms contribute significantly to the release of the ...

Most phosphorus in the environment is in an organic form that plants cannot directly use, and traditional understanding suggested only enzymes could convert it into the bioavailable inorganic form.