Using sunlight to power our homes and offices is an unaccomplished dream due to the still inefficient technology for a better use of solar energy. The study of photosynthesis in plants could provide new clues by explaining how they absorb almost 100% of the sun-light reaching them, and how they transform it into other forms of energy. Researchers Michael Haumann and Holger Dau, from the Freie Universität Berlin, used the X-ray source of the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) to invest
Researchers at Stockholm University have found a substance that quickly knocks out the anthrax bacterium. The bacterium has been used in terrorist attacks in the US and Japan, for example.
The scientists have identified the enzyme in the bacterium that makes it multiply. The substance N-hydroxylamine arrests the enzyme, and the bacterium stops growing.
“An anthrax infection in the lungs develops very rapidly and must be stopped as quickly as possible. This can be done by co
Gene is associated with increased risk of precursor of macular degeneration
A variant in a gene called Complement Factor H (CFH) appears to contribute to the increased risk of advanced age-related macular degeneration (AMD) largely or entirely through its impact on the development of a precursor of advanced AMD called soft drusen (small yellowish, extracellular deposits of lipid, protein and cellular debris in the back of the eye), according to a multinational team of researchers.
With species around the world disappearing faster than biologists can identify them, many scientists pinned their hopes on DNA barcoding, a recently proposed strategy that treats a short fragment of DNA as a sort of universal product code to identify species. But this approach generated controversy from the start, with skeptics bristling at the notion that a single gene fragment could perform such a tall task. In a new study published in PLoS Biology, Christopher Meyer and Gustav Paulay revisi
People suffering generalised social phobia experience increased brain activity when confronted with threatening faces or frightening social situations, new research shows.
The finding could help identify how severe a person’s generalised social phobia is and measure the effectiveness of pharmacological and psychological treatments for the condition.
Up to one million Australians suffer from social phobia at any one time, making it the most common anxiety disorder,
Bacterial leaf scorch is severely affecting urban shade trees grown not only to provide shade, but to help clear the air, reduce noise, and improve the aesthetics in many U.S. communities, say plant pathologists with The American Phytopathological Society (APS).
According to Ann Brooks Gould, associate extension specialist at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, bacterial leaf scorch (BLS) affects many shade tree species such as American elm, red maple, sweet gum, sycamore an
Exploiting biology’s own chemical toolbox, researchers have developed a new technique that will allow them to modify specific sequences within a DNA molecule. The approach will not only help reveal the impact of biochemical alterations to DNA, but could have far-reaching implications for DNA-based medical diagnosis and nanobiotechnology.
Combining chemistry with biotechnology, Saulius Klimasauskas, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) international research scholar
Immune rejection problems could affect any one of us. This unique research shows that producing individual patient cell lines for our own future needs is now something we might all want to consider.
Somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) forms the basis for obtaining patient specific stem cells and with the presence of reprogramming factors in human embryonic stem (hES) cells, a method for replacing the nuclei of hES cells by somatic cell nuclei has been widely sought.
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Duke University theoretical chemists who spend much of their time calculating how the exotic rules of quantum mechanics govern electrons motion between and through biological molecules have garnered surprising results when they add water to their models.
They have discovered that a scant handful of water molecules positioned in the nearly infinitesimal gap between two “docking” proteins creates unexpectedly favorable conditions for electrons to “tunnel” from one protein to anot
Canadian scientists have developed some clever molecular trickery that is helping to reduce the drug cravings of addicted rats. One of the problems in addiction is that neurons in some parts of the brain lose glutamate receptors from the cell surface, and those receptors are important for communication between neurons. The researchers have sidestepped this problem by crafting a peptide that mimics a portion of the tail of the glutamate receptor and, once inside a neuron, serves as a decoy to preve
JCB Flu Pandemic Working Group Members (Ross E.G. Upshur, Karen Faith, Jennifer L. Gibson, Alison K. Thompson, C. Shawn Tracy, Kumanan Wilson, Peter A. Singer) are available for advance interviews Weds-Fri Nov. 23-25. Please call to schedule a time. Media can preview the study, “Stand on Guard for Thee,” to be released Nov. 28, online at http://www.utoronto.ca/jcb/home/documents/pandemic.pdf.
Coping effectively with a predicted influenza pandemic that threatens to affect the h
Findings have implications for better-designed gene therapies
A human DNA-associated protein called LEDGF is the first such molecule found to control the location of HIV integration in human cells, according to a new study from researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. This study, published in this week’s early online edition of Nature Medicine, describes the first clear target for modulating where viruses insert into the human genome, which has i
Researchers have identified an enzyme crucial to the malaria parasite’s invasion of red blood cells, according to a study in the open-access journal, PLoS Pathogens.
“The most exciting practical implication of this work is that it identifies a potential drug target that is quite different from anything that is targeted by existing antimalarial drugs,” Blackman says. “This is very important, since it is widely agreed that the best way to prevent the appearance of drug resist
Using a tiny flatworm best known for its extraordinary ability to regenerate lost tissue, researchers have identified a gene that controls the ability of stem cells to differentiate into specialized cells. The gene encodes a protein that is most similar to the protein PIWI, an important regulator of stem cells in organisms ranging from plants to humans.
The replacement of tissue lost to injury or shed during the body’s normal activities is essential for the survival of most
When smedwi-2 gene is silenced, regeneration stopped in planarians
Researchers at the University of Utah have discovered that when a gene called smedwi-2 is silenced in the adult stem cells of planarians, the quarter-inch long worm is unable to carry out a biological process that has mystified scientists for centuries: regeneration.
The study published in the Nov. 25 issue of Science was led by Alejandro Sánchez Alvarado, Ph.D., Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator
Childhood infection with Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) is often asymptomatic, while the same infection in adolescents and adults causes infectious mononucleosis (IM). Liisa Selin and colleagues from the University of Massachusetts Medical School now show how, in a strange twist of immunological karma, T cells specific to a previously encountered virus (such as the flu) may come back to haunt you, by overzealously responding to a subsequent, unrelated viral infection like EBV, thereby increasing the
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