By exploiting an HIV protein that readily traverses cell membranes, Carnegie Mellon University scientists have developed a new way to introduce a gene-like molecule called a peptide nucleic acid (PNA) directly into live mammalian cells, including human embryonic stem (ES) cells. The work, published online December 2 in Chemical Communications, holds considerable promise in genetic engineering, diagnostics and therapeutics.
“Our results show that PNAs could be effectively deliv
A recent finding by a North Carolina State University biochemist advances the fundamental biology of how genetic information, encoded in DNA, is decoded for the production of proteins.
Dr. Paul F. Agris, professor of biochemistry at NC State, and academic colleagues from England and Poland show concrete evidence in favor of the 1966 “Wobble Hypothesis” offered by Francis Crick, the co-founder of the DNA molecule and its double-helix structure, and Agris’ own “Modified Wobble
Seven papers that expand upon recent research into the origin of tetrapods and their invasion of the land during the Devonian period appear in the September/October 2004 issue of Physiological and Biochemical Zoology.
Although the fossil record of this transition remains far from complete, new discoveries have increased the resolution of the morphological sequence, documented the relative rapidity and geographic distribution of the tetrapod appearance, and fueled new controversy
The hippocampus skews ’right,’ especially in males, plus the righty-lefty distinction may go back 5 million years
New MRI-based studies present more evidence that the brains of chimpanzees are human-like in terms of the relationships among brain asymmetry, handedness and language, according to research undertaken at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta. Understanding our evolutionary cousins helps us to understand what makes us human. Two related reports appear
Gene function in mammals can be quickly and reliably predicted using a high-throughput analysis of patterns of RNA expression, according to an article published today in Journal of Biology. This challenges the conventional view that tissue-specificity is the best predictor of function, and could speed up the quest to understand whole genomes, in humans and other mammals, by decades. The authors have made their mouse dataset openly accessible online to the research community.
Tim H
Hand preference and language go hand-in-hand, or do they? According to researchers at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center of Emory University, handedness is not associated with the language area of the brain, as has been the accepted scientific thought throughout history. Rather, handedness is associated with the KNOB, the area of the brain known for controlling hand movements in primates and, now, for determining handedness in chimpanzees. The researchers report their groundbreaking find
Even the Wizard of Oz couldn’t give the Tin Man a heart but the Johns Hopkins Medical Institution laboratory of John Gearhart has taken another small step on the road toward replenishing damaged cardiac tissue with pre-cursor cardiac cells grown from human embryonic stem cells (ES cells). Gearhart and his colleague, Nicolas Christoforou, here reveal preliminary data demonstrating what they say is a highly reproducible system for deriving cardiac progenitor cells from ES cells through controlled di
At the 2004 ASCB Meeting: Visualizing the Kiss of Death
The very idea threw the Victorian poet Alfred Lord Tennyson into a funk. “Nature, red in tooth and claw,” Tennyson called the nightmarish idea that life was an unending battle to eat or be eaten. If only Tennyson could have seen the latest self-defense videos made by Daniela Malide and others at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD. Using time-lapse confocal laser scanning microscopy, Malide captured human T-cells
In a world where 842 million people suffer from chronic hunger, insect pests consume 20-30 percent of world food crops. Chemical pesticides are increasingly expensive, ineffective and environmentally aggressive, killing beneficial insects and, when transmitted through the food chain, moving in unwanted directions.
The search for eco-friendly bio-insecticides has focused mainly on developing transgenic crops that express natural protein toxins. The most successful, by far, are crops
Using brain waves to control screen cursor movements, rather than moving a mouse by hand, seems like science fiction! Yet such direct control over our environment is an integral part of the development work being undertaken by participants in the Presencia project.
The IST project Presencia is not due for completion until October 2005, yet project researchers have already developed a working brain/computer interface able to provide direct control of computers. The method is primi
Doctors and their patients have puzzled over why certain cholesterol-lowering drugs work better in some people than others. In research results published in the December issue of the journal Nature Genetics, the common minnow helps provide an answer.
Researchers Douglas Crawford and Jennifer Roach of the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science (RSMAS) and Marjorie Oleksiak of North Carolina State University studied the genetic make-up of
Scientists at The Wistar Institute, working in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Helsinki, have discovered structural similarities among viruses that infect hosts from all three domains of life. These structural similarities suggest that the viruses, despite their genomic variations and differences in hosts, may have evolved from a common ancestor billions of years ago. The findings will be published in the December 3 issue of Molecular Cell.
Until recently, scie
Finding could lead to new cancer drugs, more effective radiation treatments
One of five known DNA-repair mechanisms in cells has been completely analyzed and reconstituted in a test tube by an international collaboration of researchers led by scientists from the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California. The team is the first ever to reconstitute this pathway, known as the nonhomologous end joining pathway, or NHEJ, and NHEJ is only the third repair pathway to
Research done in the last decade has suggested that limiting energy availability, for example, by dietary restriction, may extend the lifespan of different organisms. Now research from scientists at Elixir Pharmaceuticals provides a molecular sensor that supports this theory. A group headed by Javier Apfeld has found that an increased cellular ratio of two small molecules, AMP and ATP correlates well with increased lifespan in nematode worms. ATP is routinely used by the body as a source of energy a
New evidence suggests that a promising investigational treatment for patients with damaged hearts — using adult stem cells to regenerate heart tissue — may not work as planned. In the December 2004 issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, researchers from the University of Chicago show that although stem cells derived from bone marrow can find their way to areas of damaged heart muscle, infiltrate into these regions and proliferate, they do not mature into new cardiac muscle cells.
Biologists at the University of California, San Diego have identified a gene that appears to have been a critical trait in allowing the earliest plant breeders 7,000 years ago to transform teosinte, a wild grass that grows in the Mexican Sierra Madre, into maize, the world’s third most planted crop after rice and wheat.
In a paper that appears in the December 2 issue of the journal Nature, the scientists report their discovery of a gene that regulates the development of seco
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