Researchers have discovered that iron in seawater is the key binding agent in the super-strong glues of the common blue mussel, Mytilus edulis. This is the first time researchers have determined that a metal such as iron is critical to forming an amorphous, biological material.
In addition to using the knowledge to develop safer alternatives for surgical and household glues, the researchers are looking at how to combat the glue to prevent damage to shipping vessels and the accidental transp
Probing the last genomic frontier of higher organisms, an international team of scientists has succeeded in sequencing a little understood – but critical – genetic domain in rice.
In doing so, the group, led by Jiming Jiang, a professor of horticulture at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and C. Robin Buell of the Institute for Genomic Research in Rockville, Md., has exposed a supposedly barren region of a rice chromosome known as the centromere. The work, published in the current (Jan.
Identifying the targets that bacterial viruses, or phages, use to halt bacterial growth and then screening against those targets for small molecule inhibitors that attack the same targets provides a unique platform for the discovery of novel antibiotics. Researchers from Montreal-based PhageTech, Inc. describe in the February issue of Nature Biotechnology this novel method for discovering new classes of antibiotics. The article is available on-line today at www.nature.com/nbt/.
“Over the co
The ability to analyze and defend against novel biological agents has been strengthened by the development of a new device that can monitor the metabolism of living cells in near real time.
“So far we have been lucky that terrorists have used well-known biological agents like anthrax and sarin gas,” says David Cliffel, assistant professor of chemistry at Vanderbilt University, who led the development group working under the auspices of the Vanderbilt Institute for Integrative Biosystems Res
OHSU, VAMC, Roche scientists use mouse genetics to discover Alox15 gene as potential human therapeutic target
Researchers at Oregon Health & Science University, Portland Veterans Affairs Medical Center and Roche have identified an enzyme affecting skeletal development in mice that may have relevance to human osteoporosis.
The study, titled “Regulation of Bone Mass in Mice by the Lipoxygenase Gene Alox 15,” is published in the Friday, Jan. 9 edition of Science, the journal of
The secret of flowering in our major food crops like wheat has been revealed with the discovery by CSIRO Plant Industry of a gene that triggers flowering in cereals.
“Important cereal crops like wheat and barley rely on the gene we found, WAP1, to initiate flowering,” says Dr Ben Trevaskis, CSIRO Plant Industry.
“Flowering is important because it determines when the plant will produce grain or fruit – the parts we usually eat.”
WAP1 turns ’on’ to activate flowering when
Microscopic glass beads wearing coats identical to the outer membrane of a cell provide a powerful assay for proteins that bind to cell membranes, such as protein drugs or drug candidates, according to chemists at the University of California, Berkeley, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL).
The membrane-coated beads, complete with receptors that dot the surfaces of real cells, also would make a sensitive detection system for viruses or protein toxins like those produced by choler
Acinetobacter baumannii is an opportunistic pathogen operating in hospitals creating serious infections such as pneumonia. It principally affects patients who have weakened health and this is why we call it opportunistic. Moreover, the mortality rate from these infections are usually high given, on the one hand, the weakness of the patient and, on the other, A. baumannii is resistant to many antibiotics. Furthermore, once a specific course of treatment is prescribed for A. Baumannii, the pathogen has
Because of their therapeutic potential, stem cells are today a major focus of at-tention in biomedical research. To realise this potential, however, it is essential to know the signal factors that can regulate the differentiation of a stem cell into the various cell types of an organism. An important factor in stem cell biology is the signal protein “Wnt”. In the case of quite a number of stem cell types, such as embryonal stem cells or stem cells of the central nervous system, “Wnt” re-sults in cell
Mayo Clinic genomics researchers are the first to demonstrate that mixing of genetic material can occur naturally, in a living body. The researchers have discovered conditions in which pig cells and human cells can fuse together in the body to yield hybrid cells that contain genetic material from both species and carry a swine virus similar to HIV (the virus that causes AIDS) that can infect normal human cells.
While the research does not answer the question of whether this infection can ca
Researchers at the University of Florida say they have shown that minerals were key to some of the initial processes that formed life on Earth.
Specifically, a borax-containing mineral known as colemanite helps convert organic molecules found in interstellar dust clouds into a sugar, known as ribose, central to the genetic material called RNA. This announcement provides a key step toward solving the 3-billion-year-old mystery of how life on Earth began. The findings will appear in Friday’s
Researchers have identified a crucial step in a genetic process required for the development of viable eggs. The process, known as imprinting, distinguishes the paternally-inherited and the maternally-inherited copies of a number of developmentally important genes.
The majority of mammalian genes are present in two copies, both of which are equally expressed and regulated. A small number of mammalian genes, however, are subject to special regulation by a process called gene imprinting. The i
Biologists at the University of California, San Diego and the Johns Hopkins University have discovered a gene that plays a key role in initiating changes in the brain in response to sensory experience, a finding that may provide insight into certain types of learning disorders.
After birth, learning and experience change the architecture of the brain dramatically. The structure of individual neurons, or nerve cells, changes during learning to accommodate new connections between neurons. Neur
Researchers at the University of Oregon and Stanford University have located a mechanism in the human brain that blocks unwanted memories. This is the first time that anyone has shown a neurobiological basis for memory repression.
The findings, by lead researcher Michael Anderson, associate professor of psychology at the University of Oregon, and his colleague, John D.E. Gabrieli, professor of psychology at Stanford, will be published Jan. 9 in Science.
The research provides compe
Scientists at the John Innes Centre (JIC) Norwich, have discovered the molecular change that allows plants to remember winter.
Many plants need a cold period (3-8 weeks at 4° – 8°C) early in their growth to stimulate them to flower, this is called vernalisation, and without a suitable cold treatment flowering is delayed. JIC scientists have identified many of the genes involved in this process but their latest discovery is a chemical modification that occurs on one of these genes, wh
The National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), one of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), today announced that the first draft version of the honey bee genome sequence has been deposited into free public databases.
The sequence of the honey bee, Apis mellifera, was assembled by a team led by Richard Gibbs, Ph.D., director of the Human Genome Sequencing Center at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. The honey bee genome is about one-tenth the size of the human genome, containin
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