A Brown University team has found that a protein called melanopsin plays a key role in the inner workings of mysterious, spidery cells in the eye called intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells, or ipRGCs.
Melanopsin, they found, absorbs light and triggers a biochemical cascade that allows the cells to signal the brain about brightness. Through these signals, ipRGCs synchronize the body’s daily rhythms to the rising and setting of the sun. This circadian rhythm contro
Research published in leading nanotechnology journal
UC Riverside researchers from the Departments of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Botany and Plant Sciences have worked together to discover a way to utilize Quantum Dot bio-conjugates to uncover new knowledge about the binding of a protein at the growing pollen tube tip. This protein plays a critical role along with another protein (chemocyanin) in guiding sperm-laden pollen tubes to the eggs fo
Neurochemicals might someday improve life for people with memory problems
Meeting a friend you haven’t seen in years brings on a sudden surge of pleasant memories. You might even call it an avalanche.
Recent studies suggest that avalanches in your brain could actually help you to store memories. Last year, scientists at the National Institutes of Health placed slices of rat brain tissue on a microelectrode array and found that the brain cells activated each other i
Experiments on moss grown aboard two space shuttle Columbia missions showed that the plants didn’t behave as scientists expected them to in the near-absence of gravity.
The common roof moss (Ceratodon purpureus) grew in striking, clockwise spirals, according to Fred Sack, the study’s lead investigator and a professor of plant cellular and molecular biology at Ohio State University. He and his colleagues noted this even in moss cultures grown aboard the second of the two
A gene passed on by fathers that plays a vital role in helping fertilised eggs to develop into adults has helped scientists overturn the idea that essential genes have always been part of the genetic makeup of a species.
The research, published in the journal Current Biology tomorrow (26 January 2005), shows that an essential ‘paternal effect’ gene was created only recently in the evolutionary history of the fruit fly, Drosophila. This finding is remarkable because it shows that
Scientists have found the brain regions that decide where we look, and where to direct our eyes when we’re faced with a difficult choice, such as looking someone straight in the eye or looking away.
According to research published today in Current Biology, the team from Imperial College London and University College London, have found that different areas of the brain are active when we freely select where to look, and when we change our mind and look elsewhere.
Using ma
New results show that land-living crabs, descended from marine ancestors, have re-invented key aspects of the insect nose through evolution in order to solve the problem of olfaction in their air-filled terrestrial environment.
The robber crab, Birgus latro, is the world’s largest land-dwelling arthropod, with a weight reaching 4 kg and a length of more than half a meter. Robber crabs are perhaps most famous for their ability to climb tall palm trees in search of coconuts, which
By looking for genes necessary for sexual reproduction, researchers have uncovered evidence that eukaryotic cells have been capable of sex for a very long time. Recent evolutionary analyses of the genome of Giardia intestinalis, a unicellular protist parasite that represents an ancient, early-branching lineage of eukaryotes, has revealed the presence of numerous genes implicated in meiosis, the cellular division process that results in gametes.
Most eukaryotes are known to exhibit se
In a finding that broadens our insight into the cause of certain kinds of UV-induced skin cancer, researchers at Erasmus University Medical Center (Rotterdam, The Netherlands) have employed an evolutionarily ancient enzyme-repair system to identify the principal type of DNA damage responsible for the onset of skin-tumor development. The researchers’ findings also suggest that this enzyme system may be useful in developing preventative therapies against skin cancer.
Ultraviole
Proceedings of The Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
Tolerance for inequity increases with social closeness in chimpanzees by Dr SF Brosnan, Dr HC Schiff and Dr FBM de Waal. The evolution of the sense of fairness may have involved the strength of social connections, according to researchers at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta. Sarah Brosnan and Frans de Waal observed variability in chimpanzees’ responses to inequity depending on the strength of their so
University of Pittsburgh researcher reports results of randomized trial of new approach at Society for Thoracic Surgery meeting
Patients with severe congestive heart failure who had exhausted all other treatment options showed markedly improved heart function following a procedure in which their own stem cells were deployed directly into the heart by way of four tiny incisions in the chest, according to results of a trial presented today at the 41st Annual Meeting of the Society
Duke University Medical Center cell biologists have defined a signaling system between stem cells and the specialized “niche cells” that harbor and regulate them. The findings provide better understanding of the signals that stimulate stem cells to either create more copies of themselves or to differentiate into another cell type, said the researchers.
Germline stem cells are immature cells in the reproductive system that can proliferate and mature into sperm and eggs. While it
Using the common fruit fly, researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have discovered that an intricate set of signals released by stem cells’ surroundings governs their maintenance.
These findings, available online and in today’s issue of Current Biology, will aid stem cell researchers in understanding and potentially manipulating the delicate environments that promote adult stem cell formation, said Dr. Dennis McKearin, associate professor of molecular biology a
The evolution of the sense of fairness may have involved the quality of relationships according to behavioral researchers at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta.
By observing variability in chimpanzees’ responses to inequity, Sarah Brosnan, PhD, and Frans de Waal, PhD, both researchers in Yerkes’ Division of Psychobiology and the Yerkes-based Living Links Center, determined the chimpanzees’ responses depended upon the strength of their social conne
University of Iowa researchers have uncovered evidence of sexual reproduction in a single-celled organism long thought to reproduce asexually, according to a paper published in the January 26, 2005 issue of the journal Current Biology.
The finding by John M. Logsdon, Jr., assistant professor in the UI College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Department of Biological Sciences and the Roy J. Carver Center for Comparative Genomics, and colleagues from the UI and Roanoke College (Virgin
Genetic defect leads to electrical instability and mechanical pump failure
In genetic mapping of a large family with several members affected by a type of heart failure called dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM), the Mayo Clinic team found a defect in a gene on chromosome 3 called SCN5A. By scanning 156 unrelated patients with DCM, they found four additional mutations in the same gene. SCN5A is the gene that encodes the sodium ion channel in the heart, which helps regulate transport of po
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