History of life on the Earth witnessed five mass extinctions of species as a result of natural calamities. Currently, biologists are talking more and more often about the sixth wave of extinction provoked in many respects by human beings. This opinion is shared by a Russian sea fauna diversity specialist A.V. Adrianov (Institute of Maritime Biology, Far-East Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences). Research in this area has been supported by the Far-East Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, CRDF,
Anyone who’s endured their share of childhood scrapes has probably heard some version of the motherly admonishment, “Don’t pick that scab, you’ll just make it worse!” It turns out, Mom was on to something, according to research published on-line in the open-access journal PLoS Biology.
Tissue damage in humans triggers a well-characterized response marked by rapid blood clotting and a recruitment of epidermal cells to the injury. When you remove a scab, you’re also removing some of the new
Vertebrates come in a dazzling array of shapes and sizes, from blue whales to pygmy bats, their overt morphology determined largely by the skeleton. The head skeleton in particular has undergone remarkable diversification, as is beautifully illustrated in Darwin’s examination of beak morphology in Galapagos finches. This week in PLoS Biology, Justin Crump, Mary Swartz, and Charles Kimmel explore the mechanism by which cell signals induce specific patterns of cartilage and bone that form the vertebr
Published this week on-line in PLoS Biology, Sara Sawyer, Michael Emerman, and Harmit Malik investigate the genetic roots of the battle for evolutionary advantage between HIV-type viruses and the hosts they infect. What they find is surprising.
The gene, APOBEC3G, belongs to a family of primate genes that produce enzymes (in this case, APOBEC3G) that “edit” DNA and RNA, by slipping into viral particles and inducing mutations that replace one base (cytosine) with another (uracil) as the viru
That cardinal singing his heart out in your backyard has ancestors that left the neighborhood of Australia 45 million years ago. A comprehensive study of DNA from songbirds and their relatives shows that these birds, which account for almost half of all bird species, did not originate in Eurasia, as previously thought. Instead, their ancestors escaped from a relatively small area–Australasia (Australia, New Zealand and nearby islands) and New Guinea–about 45 million years ago and went on to popula
Results of laboratory experiments by Johns Hopkins scientists suggest it may be possible to “educate” the immune system to recognize rather than destroy human embryonic stem cells. Doing so could reduce the risk of rejection if the primitive cells are someday transplanted into people with conditions like Parkinson’s disease, diabetes or spinal cord injuries, the researchers say.
In their experiments, described in the July 10 issue of The Lancet, the Hopkins team successfully coaxed human
When a physician discovers cancer in a patient, the first thing the doctor wants to know is whether that cancer has spread, or “metastasized.” This metastasis signifies that the patient has entered a new and potentially lethal phase of the disease. A new study opens up the possibility of detecting whether a tumor will spread long before a patient ever reaches that dangerous phase.
Scientists at the Pacific Northwest Research Institute in Seattle have found evidence for a DNA structure char
A molecule found in nearly all cells plays a vital role in kick-starting the production of key biological molecules involved in inflammation, a group of Salk Institute scientists has discovered. The finding, published in the June 25 issue of Science, may lead to new strategies for blocking the devastating inflammation that lies at the heart of autoimmune disorders such as multiple sclerosis, arthritis, lupus as well as some cancers.
When the cells of the body are confronted with toxic che
The African clawed frog, Xenopus laevis, begins development as a compact ball of cells that undergoes a dramatic transformation through cell migrations and positional rearrangements that result in the separation of the embryo into three distinct germ layers, which go on to give rise to all of the tissues and structures in the adult animal’s body. During this transformation, known as gastrulation, the embryo changes from a roughly spherical shape to an elongated, streamlined form through a proces
The journal Endocrine-Related Cancer today publishes work showing that scientists from the Clinical Proteomics Program of the US National Cancer Institute (NCI) have discovered a test that was 100% effective for detecting early ovarian cancer in their study.
The study describes the use of a high-resolution mass spectrometer to measure patterns of protein markers in a small sample of blood. The mass spectrometer measured slight differences in the weights between normal and cancerous protein
Burr chervil is a new weed exploding across northern Idaho’s landscape. The weed may offer important clues to the biology of invasive species in general, a University of Idaho scientist says.
A decade ago, burr chervil seemed like it didn’t pose much of a threat, said Tim Prather, a UI weed scientist at Moscow. “We knew of a few plants that grew under hawthorn trees near Lewiston. It just seemed to be sitting there and not doing much.”
That was when Prather was doing graduat
Invasive species such as white pine blister rust, spotted knapweed and whirling disease in trout, as well as declining populations of plants and animals, are the focus of a new research center at the University of Idaho.
Officials announced the new Center for Research on Invasive Species and Small Populations July 14. UI scientists recently won a nearly $1 million grant from the Idaho Board of Education’s Higher Education Research Council to fund the new center.
“CRISSP bri
Less than 1 percent of the original Palouse Prairie remains. Split into patches of a few acres or less, the remnants tell an interesting story about insect communities, a UI researcher says.
Sanford Eigenbrode, interim Entomology Division chairman, is overseeing a study of insect communities in the prairie remnants that occupy small patches of hillsides across the Palouse.
The rich soils of the Palouse and modern agriculture meant that most of the original prairie was put to work g
Researchers from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona have developed the first international server that allows the user to analyze genetic diversity on a large scale. The web service, published in the special edition of Nucleic Acids Research on bioinformatics, will facilitate research about the genetic basis of hereditary diseases. The server is called PDA (Pipeline Diversity Analysis) and for the first time biologists around the world can search for small variations in the genomes of different
In experiments with fruit flies, Johns Hopkins researchers have discovered how a key light-detecting molecule in the eye moves in response to changes in light intensity. Their finding adds to growing evidence that some creatures — and probably people — adapt to light not only by mechanically shrinking the pupil to physically limit how much light enters the eye, but also by a chemical response.
Building on their previous work showing that specific proteins in eye cells are redistributed i
Scientists from Novosibirsk are currently creating a pleasant and harmless vaccine – an edible one. So far, they managed to incorporate the protein gene – HIV antigen in tomatoes. The research is supported by International Science and Technology Center (ISTC).
All patients would be overjoyed to get edible vaccines, contained in vegetables and fruit. Imagine, a patient eats a vaccine and this way gets protected from a dangerous infection. However, this is not a fantasy, the fact being confir
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