Researchers have discovered the genetic controls that cause trees to stop growing and go dormant in the fall, as well as the mechanism that causes them to begin flowering and produce seeds – a major step forward in understanding the basic genetics of tree growth.
The findings were made by scientists from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Oregon State University and two other institutions, and published in the journal Science. They represent a significant fundamental
Using small molecules containing platinum, Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center researchers have created a process to inhibit a class of proteins important in HIV and cancer.
The findings may help researchers develop new drugs to fight HIV or cancer by selectively targeting proteins known as zinc fingers.
In the May 30 issue of the journal Chemistry & Biology, researchers reported that a zinc finger protein, known as HIV NCp7, can be inhibited when i
When single-celled organisms such as sperm crack their whip-like appendages called flagella, the beating sets them in motion. But in certain colonies of green algae, flagella also boost nutrient uptake, according to surprising new research.
In the early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers from the University of Arizona and Brown University explain how flagella allow these algae to get the energy they need to multiply and create colon
Dartmouth researchers, working with scientists at the University of Arizona and at the Department of Natural Resources in Sonora, Mexico, have published a study on the impact of arsenic exposure on DNA damage. They have determined that arsenic in drinking water is associated with a decrease in the body’s ability to repair its DNA.
“This work supports the idea that arsenic in drinking water can promote the carcinogenic effects of other chemicals,” says Angeline Andrew, the lead auth
Despite lack of a key component of the immune system, a line of genetically engineered mice can control chronic herpes virus infections, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found.
Scientists can’t prove it yet, but they suspect the missing immune system component, a group of molecules known as the Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC) Class Ia, has a previously unrecognized backup that is similar enough to step in and fill the void left b
An international team of scientists, led by researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), has discovered a crucial missing link in the search for the origin of HIV-1, the virus responsible for human AIDS. That missing link is the natural reservoir of the virus, which the team has found in wild-living chimpanzees in southern Cameroon.
The findings provide important clues to how the disease migrated from non-human to human primates, and will be released Thursday (May 25) in Sc
An improved technique for culturing cells, developed at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), may enable new, fundamental insights into the behavior of neuronal cells.
Culturing particular types of cells in isolation is a basic technique for measuring how they respond to various stimuli, testing new drugs, and similar cell biology tasks. Neuronal cells, which make up the central nervous system in mammals, are both particularly important and particularly har
Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) recently added 150 new methods–nicknamed “recipes”–to a database already containing 255 procedures for analyzing specific synthetic polymers using matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI) mass spectrometry.
The recipes provide data critical to the industrial design, manufacture and application of synthetic polymers. They have been collected from the peer-review scientific literature and included in the
For Dr. Sydney Finegold, research is like reading a really good mystery or detective story. “But it is real life and one can see the results in one’s own patients,” he said. “So, one can have great fun while accomplishing worthwhile things.”
With a grant from the Department of Defense, Finegold has taken his passion for research and applied it to a problem that affects civilians as well as injured service members: wound bacteria.
“The flora of wound infections is v
A rare genetic defect that can trigger a host of diseases from type 1 diabetes to alopecia has helped explain the imbalance of immune regulator and killer cells in autoimmune disease.
Mutation in the Aire gene causes APS1, a disease causing two out of three problems – an underactive parathyroid, yeast infection of the skin and/or mucous membrane and adrenal gland insufficiency – by age 5 and up to 16 autoimmune diseases over a lifetime.
The same mutation causes a defec
COX-1 and COX-2 enzymes may be blocked by pain medications such as Advil and Vioxx in a more complex manner than was previously understood, a Queen’s University study has found.
“The results of the study have potential implications for how we classify the commonly used anti-inflammatory and pain drugs for aches, pains, and fever,” says Colin Funk, a professor of Biochemistry and Physiology at Queen’s and Canada Research Chair in Molecular, Cellular and Physiologiocal Medicine.
The researcher Zafira Castaño has discovered that the loss of a protein in the early phases of lung cancer favors tumor growth. This was the conclusion that the Doctor in Biochemistry reached in the dissertation which she defended at the University of Navarra.
In order to perform the study she began with prior studies from her laboratory, which demonstrated that the protein aCP4 appears in the tissue cells that coat the normal lung, and which, nevertheless, are lost in the first phas
In a recent study, genetically modified cassava plants produced roots that were more than two-and-a-half times the size of normal cassava roots.
The findings could help ease hunger in many countries where people rely heavily on the cassava plant (Manihot esculenta) as a primary food source, said Richard Sayre, the study’s lead author and a professor of plant cellular and molecular biology at Ohio State University.
The researchers used a gene from the bacterium E. c
It doesn’t take John Wayne’s deliberate, pigeon-toed swagger or Marilyn Monroe’s famously wiggly sway to judge a person’s gender based on the way they move. People are astonishingly accurate when asked to judge the gender of walking human figures, even when they are represented by 15 small dots of light attached to major joints of the body.
And not only that, when human observers watched the walking motion of a male so-called “point light walker,” they were more sensitive t
New findings in nerve communication
If the chemistry is right … you might remember this
A young Australian scientist has made an important discovery about how brain cells communicate. This finding is central to understanding all brain function – from laying down memory to being able to walk
The groundbreaking research has been published in the latest edition of world-leading journal Nature Neuroscience.
Victor Anggono, a PhD student at the Children
The bacterium that causes bubonic plague would seem unlikely to help medical scientists, but researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have harnessed it to uncover a new regulatory mechanism that inhibits the immune system.
Three species of the Yersinia bacteria, known to cause plague and gastroenteritis, contain a small molecule, called a virulence factor, that the researchers have found modifies host enzymes critical to normal functioning.
“This type of modificati
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