By studying the “memory” of the respiratory system, a group of researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison have identified a key player – a protein called BDNF that’s involved in learning – responsible for the body’s ability to keep breathing properly, despite the challenges it may face.
The findings, published Dec. 14 in the online edition of Nature Neuroscience, could provide ideas of new drug targets, which could lead to new treatments for or ways to prevent a number of
Researchers at Ohio State University have created a DNA gene chip that contains thousands of the genes for a horse and one of the first gene chips for a domestic animal.
The new chip houses more than 3,200 expressed horse genes on a sliver of glass about the size of a postage stamp. When the researchers began developing this chip two years ago, only 200 horse genes were known.
This new chip will allow researchers to scan an individual horses genes at once to see which ones are acti
New research identifies the molecular mechanisms that keep a plant’s circadian clock running on a 24-hour schedule.
The study, reported this week in the journal Nature, is the first to describe the physical connection between two molecular components -– genes called TOC1 and ZTL — that keep a plant’s “clock” running at the right speed. Scientists have spent more than a decade trying to understand the interactions between the components that regulate a plant’s timing.
Knowin
As New Year’s Eve approaches and you prepare to pop open that champagne bottle, keep your fingers crossed for small bubbles … and lots of them.
That long train of tiny, rising bubbles is the key to the drink’s flavor and aroma, scientists say. And the smaller the bubbles, the better, according to the people who should know, researchers in the Champagne region of France, home to the famous vineyards that gave birth to the bubbly wine.
“Our ultimate goal is to cre
A single gene appears to kick off a critical step in the development of the early embryo – the formation of the brain and spinal cord – and thus may offer a way to screen for fetal spinal cord defects such as spina bifida.
Neural tube defects, including spina bifida – an open spinal cord – and anencephaly, or lack of a complete brain, are among the most common serious birth defects in the United States. While the incidence has gone down in this country thanks to educational efforts encourag
The potential of new technologies to reveal insights into the fundamental structure and function of biological systems continues to grow rapidly –but the ability to interpret and merge these datasets lags behind the ability to collect it. In an effort to overcome these limitations, Sven Bergmann, Jan Ihmels, and Naama Barkai, of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, developed a comparative model that integrates gene expression data from microarrays with genomic sequence information
You might say that caspases are obsessed with death. The primary agents of programmed cell death, or apoptosis, caspases kill cells by destroying proteins that sustain cellular processes. Apoptosis, a highly controlled sequence of events that eliminates dangerous or unnecessary cells, contributes to a wide variety of developmental and physiological processes–in a developing embryo, apoptosis creates the space between fingers and adjusts nerve cell populations to match the number of cells they targe
Moscow biologists have proved that people can use the capability of some plants to protect themselves from vermin insects with the help of biologically active substances.
It has been found that plants can protect themselves from vermin insects. One way is to use substances which the plants synthesise to suppress insects’ hormones activity and to disrupt their development cycle. Having studied the way these substances act, people can try to use these substances for their own purposes.
Microbes are everywhere, but when they are in mined soils, they react with the mineral pyrite to speed up acidification of mine run-off water. Scientists have been trying to understand the chemistry behind this process that eventually leads to widespread acidification of water bodies and deposition of heavy metals. What a new study has found seems to defy the laws of chemistry: microbes react with the pyrite surface, coating it with chemicals that would be expected to hinder further reactions. Despit
ADARs do more than alter codon sequence in RNA
Recent studies at the University of Utah suggest new ways of regulating the behaviors that allow us to smell food, learn, and remember.
Brenda L. Bass, Ph.D., professor of biochemistry at the U School of Medicine and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, and Leath A. Tonkin, a graduate student in her lab, published their findings in the Dec. 5 issue of the journal Science.
With the help of a tiny worm, C. ele
Scientists at UCSF’s Ernest Gallo Clinic and Research Center have identified a single brain protein that can account for most of the intoxicating effects of alcohol. The finding pinpoints perhaps the best target yet for a drug to block alcohol’s effect and potentially treat alcoholism, the scientists say.
The mechanisms by which alcohol acts on the brain are thought to be similar throughout the animal kingdom, since species from worms and fruit flies to mice and humans all become
New ’global’ technique a dividend of NSF’s Arabidopsis 2010 effort
A new “gene expression” map is helping scientists track how a complex tissue ultimately arises from the blueprint of thousands of genes.
Focusing on the root of a small flowering mustard plant, Arabidopsis thaliana, a research team led by Duke University biologist Philip Benfey created a detailed mosaic of cells showing where and when about 22,000 of the plant’s roughly 28,000 genes are activated within grow
Cells may help researchers in skin and hair therapies; tool can be used to find other body stem cells, including cancer stem cells
Researchers at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at The Rockefeller University have discovered a new method to track and isolate elusive stem cells. The new animal model they developed was successfully tested by isolating and characterizing skin stem cells, but may also be valuable in searching for stem cells that produce the cells of the heart, pancreas
Researchers based at the University of Glasgow, using X-ray data collected at the Synchrotron Radiation Source (SRS) at CCLRC Daresbury Laboratory, have made a major advance in our understanding of the process by which sunlight is converted to food energy, without which life on earth could not exist. The work is published this week (12 December 2003) in the journal Science.
Green plants convert the sun’s energy to a usable form in a process called photosynthesis, which ultimately gives us al
Populations of several European passerines that winter south of the Sahara have undergone a marked decline. The causes of negative population trends are largely unknown, but ecological conditions during winter in Africa may have carry-over effects during northward spring migration and reproduction.
In the January issue of Ecology Letters, Saino, Szép, Romano, Rubolini, and Møller analyse the effect of ecological conditions in the winter quarters on timing of arrival of barn swallows (Hirund
A new computer vision system for automated analysis of animal movement — honey bee activities, in particular — is expected to accelerate animal behavior research, which also has implications for biologically inspired design of robots and computers.
The animal movement analysis system is part of the BioTracking Project, an effort conducted by Georgia Institute of Technology robotics researchers led by Tucker Balch, an assistant professor of computing.
“We believe the language o
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