Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas have shown that insulin family signaling is important for male sex determination, a discovery that furthers the understanding of testes formation and eventually could lead to treatments for reproductive disorders.
Their findings appear in the current issue of Nature and are available online.
“We are excited by this research for two reasons,” said Dr. Luis Parada, senior author of the Nature study and director of the Center fo
Duke University Medical Center researchers may have solved the mystery of why lymph nodes swell when the body fights infection. Their findings may redefine how the immune system functions, they said.
Their research, published in the December 2003 issue of Nature Immunology, centered on the role of mast cells. Mast cells are immune cells that are typically found just under the skin and in the lining of the intestine and lungs and were previously associated primarily with the induction of al
Scientists have known for many years that auditory cues such as song can influence hormone release and the growth of gonads in songbirds, but how the brain picks out specific sounds, interprets them correctly and translates them into hormonal and behavioral signals has remained a mystery. New evidence suggests a third form of a key reproduction hormone could be a link between song and enhanced procreation in songbirds.
It’s a long-held tenet of avian biology that songbirds have just tw
A Rutgers-led team has produced the first ever measurement of the “heat of life” – the energies involved in DNA replication and synthesis. The researchers’ findings have opened the door to a better understanding of the origins of replication errors that can result in genetic mutations and serious illness. This is crucial knowledge for the development of medical diagnostics and treatments of genetic disorders.
“Our measurements represent the first direct determination of the energies an
Caenorhabditis elegans, a 1-mm soil-dwelling roundworm with 959 cells, may be the best-understood multicellular organism on the planet. As the most “pared-down” animal that shares essential features of human biology—from embryogenesis to aging—C. elegans is a favorite subject for studying how genes control these processes. The way these genes work in worms helps scientists understand how diseases like cancer and Alzheimer’s develop in humans when genes malfunction. With the publication of a genome s
The tropical mantis shrimp has the most sophisticated eyes of any creature on the planet, yet it often lives at murky depths where the only light is a filtered, dim blue. Why does it need such complex vision?
Marine biologists and physiologists have now discovered at least one use for these eyes in the deep, blue ocean: to see the fluorescent markings mantis shrimp use to signal or threaten one another.
The shrimps’ characteristic spots are easy to see in shallow water but o
East African naked mole-rats, the only known cold-blooded mammal, have shown a rather heated response in lab tests that may have important implications for treating chronic pain in humans.
The blind, furless creatures that live underground in colonies lack a body chemical called Substance P, a neurotransmitter normally in the skin that sends pain signals to the central nervous system. The rats feel no immediate pain when cut, scraped or subjected to heat stimuli. They only feel some aches.
Primping and passing time with peers may serve a serious purpose, suggests a new study by a UCLA-led team of primate researchers.
The more time wild female baboons spend in the company of other adult baboons, particularly while occupied with grooming activities, the more likely their offspring are to live until their first birthday, the team reports in the Nov. 14 issue of Science.
“Until now, social scientists assumed that because females invest a lot in social relationships, the
RNA, often thought of as merely the chemical messenger that helps decode DNA’s genetic instructions for making proteins, can itself play a crucial role in regulating protein expression. Not surprisingly, this regulation occurs through proteins that bind to RNA. All cells in the body, especially nerve cells in the brain, use and regulate RNA in an exquisite fashion.
Scientists have previously shown that defects in RNA binding underlie several human brain disorders, but their RNA targets
Researchers have used ultraviolet light to “weld” a key regulatory protein to its RNA targets, creating a new tool that can be used to identify novel proteins involved in a variety of human diseases.
Using this technique, the researchers have identified an array of RNA molecules regulated by the RNA-binding protein, Nova, which has been implicated in an autoimmune neurodegenerative disease. The researchers believe their technique may help in finding the RNA targets of other proteins involved
Super squirrel moms provide silver spoon beginnings
If they could, many women would likely take a page out of the red squirrel’s book. The northern animal can not only decide when its babies are born in the season but how many brothers and sisters will be in a litter, according to new research by University of Alberta scientists.
But not all female squirrels have these “super mom” capabilities whose genes are wired with these traits–there are “dud moms” in the population as
Researchers have developed powerful new techniques to see in unprecedented detail how blood-forming cells develop in zebrafish. The scientists have used this system to transplant blood cells with fluorescent “tags” so they can observe how the cells restore the blood system in mutant zebrafish that do not have any red blood cells.
The techniques may be helpful in learning how bone marrow transplants reconstitute the immune systems of patients whose immune cells have been destroyed by chemothe
For more than a century, scientists have concluded that a species evolves or adapts by going through an infinite number of small genetic changes over a long period of time.
However, a team of researchers, including a Michigan State University plant biologist, has provided new evidence that an alternate theory is actually at work, one in which the process begins with several large mutations before settling down into a series of smaller ones.
The research is published in the Nov. 12 i
Hummingbirds visited nearly 70 times more often after scientists altered the color of a kind of monkeyflower from pink – beloved by bees but virtually ignored by hummingbirds – to a hummer-attractive yellow-orange.
Researchers writing in the Nov. 13 issue of Nature say perhaps it was a major change or two, such as petal color, that first forged the fork in the evolutionary road that led to today’s species of monkeyflowers that are attractive to and pollinated by hummingbirds and separat
The enzyme that can help turn a one-time experience into a long-term memory has been identified in mice, researchers at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center reported today at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in New Orleans. Ashok Hegde, Ph.D., of Wake Forest described the researchers’ work and proposed a theory for how lasting memories are formed, a process that involves the enzyme known as protein kinase C.
“One of the hallmarks of memories that last very lo
Researchers at the University of Virginia Health System have discovered that a protein expressed by the immune system, called TL1A, is linked to inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) in patients, especially Crohn’s disease. This is the first time TL1A has been linked to Crohn’s. In a study involving fifty patients at U.Va., published in the Nov. 1 issue of The Journal of Immunology, the research team found that TL1A was expressed in patients suffering from IBD, but not in control patients who ar
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