Researchers comparing the human genome with the genomes of other species have discovered a surprising number of matching DNA sequences in a variety of vertebrate species, including the mouse, rat, dog, and chicken. The fact that these sequences have remained unchanged over long periods of evolutionary history indicates that they are biologically important, but for now their functions are largely a mystery.
Published May 6 by Science Express (the online edition of the journal Science), these
The world’s oldest known modern hummingbird fossils have been discovered in Germany. The tiny skeletons are also the first modern-type hummingbird fossils ever found in the Old World. These creatures, with strikingly similar resemblances to today’s hummingbirds, lived in present-day Germany more than 30 million year ago. Although hummingbirds are currently restricted to the Americas, their long-extinct Old World “look-alikes” may have helped determine the shape of some Asian and African flo
Scientists corral, band and release over 300 threatened flamingoes for research
With South America’s Mars-like Altiplano region serving as a surreal back-drop, a group of scientists from the Bronx Zoo-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) recently braved frigid temperatures, high winds, and altitudes of over 11,000 feet to fit bands on 300 threatened James’ flamingoes chicks. Working in Eduardo Avaroa Faunal Reserve in southern Bolivia, the banding effort is part of a multi-natio
Further research will explore extent of genes’ role in sudden cardiac death
Imagine walking down the street, collapsing without warning and dying within minutes. According to the American Heart Association, about 250,000 Americans suffer sudden cardiac death each year, and half of them may have no prior warning. And, in 5 to 10 percent of all cases, these sudden cardiac deaths remain unexplained since the heart may have no visible abnormality.
In an effort to explore if
A “dead zone,” like the Stephen King novel of the same name, is a place where life can end. The horror meister probably wasn’t thinking about fish.
Dead zones are areas of the ocean where marine life – especially large quantities of fish – mysteriously die and where future marine life may never have a chance.
One well-known dead zone is near the Mississippi River delta area, where the nearby Sabine and Atchafalaya Rivers flow into southern Louisiana. Texas A&M University at G
A family of pesticides used increasingly nationwide in place of more heavily restricted organophosphate pesticides has accumulated in many creek sediments to levels that are toxic to freshwater bottom dwellers, according to a new study.
The pesticides, called pyrethroids (pie-REE-throids), have been considered safe for fish and other organisms that live in the water column, but no one has studied their effect on sediment-dwelling organisms, such as midge larvae or shrimp-like amphipods, sai
Highly purified soy foods and soy supplements marketed in the United States may stimulate the growth of pre-existing estrogen-dependent breast tumors, according to a study done at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
“Soy has been correlated with low rates of breast cancer in Asian populations, but soy foods in Asia are made from minimally processed soybeans or defatted, toasted soy flour, which is quite different from soy products consumed in the U.S.,” said William G. Helferich
Lablab, a drought-tolerant, summer annual legume native to the tropics, could be a valuable addition to the Texas forage repertoire, according to a Texas Agricultural Experiment Station scientist.
“An accelerated lablab breeding and evaluation program will start for this summer to provide improved cultivars for both livestock and wildlife management systems in Texas,” said Dr. Ray Smith, Experiment Station legume breeder based at the Texas A&M University System Agricultural Research and Ext
Scientists at The Hospital for Sick Children (Sick Kids) and UCLA have pinpointed for the first time a region of the brain responsible for storing and retrieving distant memories. This research is reported in the May 7, 2004 issue of the journal Science.
“It was previously known that the hippocampus processes recent memory, but that the hippocampus did not store memories permanently. We were able to determine that it is the anterior cingulate cortex where older, or lifelong, memories are st
Profos vervollständigt Bakteriophagenprotein Patentportfolio
Das Biotechnologieunternehmen Profos AG hat sich weltweit exklusive Patentrechte des britischen Institute of Food Research (IFR) und des Instituts für Mikrobiologie der Technischen Universität München zur gezielten Identifizierung und Zerstörung gram-positiver Bakterien mittels Bakteriophagenproteine gesichert. Damit hat Profos sein Patentportfolio wesentlich erweitert, das sich bisher bereits u. a. auf den Nachweis und die
Hundreds of stretches of DNA may be so critical to life’s machinery that they have been “ultra-conserved” throughout hundreds of millions of years of evolution. Researchers have found precisely the same sequences in the genomes of humans, rats, and mice; sequences that are 95 to 99 percent identical to these can be found in the chicken and dog genomes, as well.
Most of these ultra-conserved regions do not appear to code for proteins, but may instead play a regulatory role. Evolutionary
Mothers can be a positive influence in their children’s lives, whether or not they are single parents. A new multiethnic study at Cornell University has found that being a single parent does not appear to have a negative effect on the behavior or educational performance of a mother’s 12- and 13-year-old children.
What mattered most in this study, Cornell researcher Henry Ricciuti says, is a mother’s education and ability level and, to a lesser extent, family income and qualit
A team of scientists, led by the Institute of Food Research (IFR) in the UK, has discovered an immune system malfunction that is likely to play a profound role in food allergy.
Food allergy can be life threatening, but understanding the cause has remained a challenge for science. The international team has found that two types of cells stop communicating. “Either they are not listening to each other or they stop talking”, said research leader Dr Claudio Nicoletti of the IFR. This means that
A review article in this week’s issue of THE LANCET discusses how autoantibody detection in the blood of healthy individuals could have potential as a marker for future autoimmune diseases such as Rheumatoid arthritis and Lupus syndrome.
Hal Scofield from the Oklahoma Research Foundation, USA, discusses recent evidence suggesting that autoantibodies (antibodies that attack the body’s own tissue) are often apparent several years before an illness becomes manifest. He cites recent research am
New research in two papers published this week in The Journal of Pathology gives greater insight into why the virus is so deadly, and shows that it could transfer from person to person via breath, urine, faeces and even sweat.
Searching for SARS
Scientists in China used markers that only bind to SARS-CoV to analyse tissues from four people who had died of the infection. They found the virus in the lungs, trachea/bronchus, stomach, small intestine, distal convoluted renal tubu
The overproduction, or ‘overexpression’, of the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) is one of the most common aberrations in cancer, and subsequently agents that inhibit EGFR are among the most hotly-pursued potential products in the pharmaceutical industry. Now, just weeks after one of the first anti-EGFR antibodies, ImClone’s Erbitux (Cetuximab), was approved for use in Europe and the USA, a ‘second generation’ anti-EGFR antibody is set to enter early-phase clinical trials in Australia. In two
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