’It’s a war inside a tree hole’
If you think your place is a dump, try living in a tree hole: a dark flooded crevice with years of accumulated decomposing leaves and bugs, infested with bacteria, other microbes, and crawling with insect larvae.
A biologist at Washington University in St. Louis has studied the ecosystem of the tree hole and the impact that three factors – predation, resources and disturbance — have on species diversity.
Jamie Kneite
A discovery by a University of California, San Diego biologist that some species of bees exploit chemical clues left by other bee species to guide their kin to food provides evidence that eavesdropping may be an evolutionary driving force behind some bees’ ability to conceal communication inside the hive, using a form of animal language to encode food location.
Bees can use two main forms of communication to tell their hive mates where to find food: abstract representations such as sounds o
A team led by University of California San Diego neurobiologists has developed a new approach to interpreting brain electroencephalograms, or EEGs, that provides an unprecedented view of thought in action and has the potential to advance our understanding of disorders like epilepsy and autism.
The new information processing and visualization methods that make it possible to follow activation in different areas of the brain dynamically are detailed in a paper featured on the cover of the June
Nearly 150 years after Darwin published On the Origin of Species, biologists are still debating how new species emerge from old–and even the definition of species itself. Darwin demurred from offering a hard and fast definition, suggesting that such a thing was “undiscoverable.”
In this issue of PLoS Biology, Daniel Barbash and colleagues identify a true speciation gene in the fruitfly Drosophila.
One of the more enduring definitions characterizes organisms as distinct reproducti
Implications for tissue regeneration, birth defects and heart disease
In early development, how do cells know to put the right spacing between ribs, fingers and toes? How do they communicate with each other to form symmetrical and repeated patterns such as zebra stripes or leopard spots?
For the first time, UCLA researchers have recreated the ability of mammalian cells to self-organize, forming evenly spaced patterns in a test tube. Published in the June 22, 2004 issue of the
A new research study published in the June issue of Cancer Cell identifies the molecular events that contribute to a notoriously treatment-resistant form of T cell leukemia.
The findings reveal that disruption of immune cell differentiation is central to disease progression and provide new avenues for development of future therapeutics.
T cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL) accounts for 10%-15% of pediatric and 25% of adult ALL cases. A gene called TAL1/SCL is frequently act
An MIT team has developed new technology that could jump-start scientists’ ability to create specific cell types from human embryonic stem cells, a feat with implications for developing replacement organs and a variety of other tissue engineering applications.
The scientists have already identified a simple method for producing substantially pure populations of epithelial-like cells from human embryonic stem cells. Epithelial cells could be useful in making synthetic skin.
Hu
During their tender youth, both the endangered fish species totoaba and the commercially important gulf corvina require the brackish water habitat provided by the shrinking Colorado River estuary, report researchers.
Although overfishing has been implicated in the decline of both species, commercial harvesting isn’t the only reason for the two species’ decline, the finding suggests. Since 1960, diversion of Colorado River water for human uses has greatly reduced the amount of fresh water t
Plant pathologists present research on food safety at APS Annual Meeting in Anaheim, California
Recent advances in food safety research are enabling plant pathologists to gain insight into how dangerous human pathogens, such as strains of E.coli and Salmonella, can survive on fresh fruits and vegetables and what can be done to control future outbreaks.
According to Steve Scheuerell, faculty research associate at Oregon State University’s Department of Botany and Plant P
Heat turns colonial algae into hotties.
When algae find themselves in hot water, the normally asexual organisms get all stressed out and turn sexual.
Blame it on the free radicals, says a team of researchers.
Colonies of the multicellular green alga Volvox carteri exposed to temperatures of 111 degrees Fahrenheit (42.5 degrees Celsius) had twice the amount of free radicals, oxidants that can damage biological structures, as unheated colonies. High levels of oxidan
Researchers have uncovered a cellular mechanism that can alter the fate of progenitor cells that normally generate the lung, causing them to create gut cells instead. The findings, which are published this week in the top-tier Open Access journal, Journal of Biology, could help researchers hoping to use adult stem cells for therapeutic purposes. Brigid Hogan and Tadashi Okubo, from Duke University Medical Center, studied the lungs of transgenic mice that had developed under the influence of
Carnegie Mellon University biologists are the first to show that minor changes in the tail of one protein cripple yeast’s ability to assemble protein-making machines called ribosomes. The findings, published in a recent issue of Molecular Cell, ultimately could help scientists develop better drugs to fight fungal infections.
“Our findings are the first to link the structure of a ribosomal protein to a critical step in the pathway to assembling a fully functional ribosome,” explained Joh
Using a common worm as a model, researchers from Duke University Medical Center have identified specific genes within Salmonella that give the bacteria its ability to infect host cells.
They said their findings could ultimately lead to improved drugs to prevent or treat Salmonella infections.
The researchers found four genes related to the Salmonella’s “molecular syringe” that are required for the bacteria to have maximum potency in infecting the worm, known as Caenorhabditis
For one caterpillar, eating an unusual fruit may be the key to an easy food supply and protection against parasites, according to a team of Penn State researchers.
The Heliothis subflexa caterpillar is a specialist herbivore that eats only the fruit of Physalis plants which include ground cherry, tomatillo and Chinese lantern. H. subflexa’s choice of food turns out to have unusual benefits in the three-way struggle between herbivores, their predatory wasps and the plants.
“We
Manx shearwaters marry for life and share the incubation and feeding of their single chick. Dr Keith Hamer of Leeds University’s School of Biology has discovered that males consistently provide more food than their wives, but it’s not because they’re better parents – they just don’t listen.
By dangling microphones into burrows of nesting shearwaters, Dr Hamer and Cardiff University colleagues Petra Quillfeldt and Juan Masselo found differences in the way shearwaters respond to the begging ca
A University of Arizona graduate student may be the first eyewitness to the birth of a new species. Her new findings, appearing in the June 7, 2004 Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, could help biologists identify and understand the precise genetic changes that lead a species to evolve into two separate species.
Laura K. Reed and her advisor, Regents’ Professor Therese Markow, made the discovery by observing breeding patterns of fruitflies that live among rotting cacti in wester
Feedback
