Even wings that are still in development help living birds gain traction on slopes and scale obstacles
Biologists have long argued about how birds evolved the ability to fly, because it is not immediately evident what improvement in fitness would result from ancestral, partly evolved wings. Two theories have recently dominated the debate: one postulates that flight evolved in tree-dwelling ancestors that used their forelimbs to help them glide, while the other considers ancestral
A significant difference between human and chimpanzee immune cells may provide clues in the search to understand the diverse array of human immune-related diseases. Researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine have uncovered a a specific type of molecule expressed on non-human primate T cells, but not human T cells. T cells are important orchestrators of the immune system.
In a study to be published on-line in advance of publication in Proceedings of
An important source of uncertainty in predictions about global warming is how plants will respond to increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide. Now biologists at the University of California, San Diego have made significant advances toward understanding the mechanism plants use to regulate their carbon dioxide intake.
The study, published in the May 1 early on-line edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows how the level of carbon dioxide in the atm
Although linguists have argued that certain patterns of language organization are the exclusive province of humans — perhaps the only uniquely human component of language — researchers from the University of Chicago and the University of California San Diego have discovered the same capacity to recognize such patterns and distinguish between them in Sturnus vulgaris, the common European starling.
In the April 27, 2006, issue of Nature, the researchers show that these starlings – long kn
WHAT: Marburg haemorrhagic fever is an uncommon disease. In some outbreaks in Africa, nearly 90 percent of cases have been fatal. Such high mortality rates make Marburg virus, the agent that causes the disease, a great concern for researchers developing medical countermeasures against potential bioterrorist threats. Currently there is no effective way to prevent or treat Marburg virus after someone is infected, but new research appearing in this week’s issue of the journal The Lancet may chang
Efforts now directed a understanding genetic causes of disease
The sequencing of human chromosome 3 announced in the current issue of the journal Nature represents a milestone for the Baylor College of Medicine Human Genome Sequencing Center – the final stage of its multi-year project to sequence the human genome.
Researchers at the BCM genome sequencing center in Houston are now using the information to discover the genetic basis for human disease, said Dr. Richard
A group of Japanese scientists has discovered that cannabinoids can cause some white blood cells to lose their ability to migrate to the sites of infection and inflammation. These findings, which appear in the May 5 issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry, could have potential use in the development of novel anti-inflammatory drugs.
The cannabinoids are a group of chemicals that include marijuana. These compounds bind to and activate the body’s cannabinoid receptors. There are
It is a marvel of nature that a creature such as a caterpillar changes into something quite different, a butterfly. Contrast that with a grasshopper, which looks largely the same from the time it hatches through its adult stage.
New University of Washington research shows that a regulatory gene named broad, known to be necessary for development of insects that undergo complete metamorphosis, also is key for the maturation of insects that have incomplete metamorphosis. The work ap
For some microbes, the transformation from a benign lifestyle in the soil to that of a potentially deadly human pathogen is just a breath away.
Inhaled into the lungs of a mammal, spores from a class of six related soil molds found around the world encounter a new, warmer environment. And as soon as they do, they rapidly shift gears and assume the guise of pathogenic yeast, causing such serious and sometimes deadly afflictions as blastomycosis and histoplasmosis.
But
MIT scientists have just learned another lesson from nature. After years of wondering how organisms managed to create self-medications, such as anti-fungal agents, chemists have discovered the simple secret. Scientists already knew that a particular enzyme was able to coax a reaction out of stubborn chemical concoctions to generate a large family of medically valuable compounds called halogenated natural products. The question was, how do they do it? Chemists woul
Researchers have identified a new way to promote recovery after spinal cord injury with an advance in stem-cell technology. A study conducted by members of the New York State Center of Research Excellence in Spinal Cord Injury and published today in the open access journal Journal of Biology reveals that rats recover from spinal cord injury following transplantation with immature support cells of the central nervous system generated from stem cells. Transplanting immature support cells called astro
Biophysicists at the Institut Curie/CNRS, in collaboration with CNRS and University Pierre et Marie Curie physicists and biologists, have just demonstrated the remarkable elasticity of chromatin, the DNA-protein complex that makes up the chromosomes. Observed by nanomanipulation of individual DNA molecules, this resilience facilitates the work of the enzymes that “read” the genetic material and of those that repair it if damaged. When alterations – mutations – remain in the DNA, there is a risk that
The neurons in the central nervous system (CNS) are reported to have a previously unknown ability to regulate the immune system and suppress inflammatory conditions of the CNS.
This was published by scientists at Lund University in Sweden in an article in the journal of Nature Medicine. This pioneering discovery paves the way for future therapeutic targets for inflammatory and degenerative diseases of CNS like multiple sclerosis (MS), Alzheimer’s, and Parkinson’s.
It
The European starling – long known as a virtuoso songbird and as an expert mimic too – may also soon gain a reputation as something of a “grammar-marm.” This three-ounce bird, new research shows, can learn syntactic patterns formerly thought to be the exclusive province of humans.
Led by Timothy Q. Gentner, assistant professor of psychology at the University of California, San Diego, a study published in the April 27 issue of Nature demonstrates that starlings have the capaci
New animal studies conducted at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies show that the only human gene therapy treatment to date considered to be largely successful, is, in fact, riskier than realized.
The Salk researchers, led by Inder Verma, Ph.D., a professor in the Laboratory of Genetics, discovered that the healthy copy, which replaces the defective gene can itself promote cancer development. Their findings appear in this week’s issue of the journal Nature.
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Gene regulation is a major issue in biology – how are different genes activated in different tissues or at different times in life, and how and which genes interact with each other? A major breakthrough in the understanding of this issue is about to be published in the scientific journal “PLoS Biology” by Miguel R. Branco and Ana Pombo, two Portuguese scientists at the MRC Clinical Sciences Centre, Imperial College London, UK. The two scientists show that chromosomes in the nucleus of metabolical
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