Researchers sifting through the indispensable machinery that senses and fixes broken DNA have discovered a new culprit that can induce instability in the genome and thereby set the stage for cancer to develop.
Studies in mice have shown that loss of H2AX, a gene that produces a protein called a histone that is part of the chromosomal structure, can tip the delicate balance of proteins that are curators of the human genome. When H2AX ceases to function properly, lymphomas and solid tu
Like the snap of a clothespin, the sudden mixing of closely related species may occasionally provide the energy to impel rapid evolutionary change, according to a new report by researchers from Indiana University Bloomington and three other institutions. Their paper was made available online by Science magazine´s “Science Express” service.
A study of sunflower species that began 15 years ago shows that the sudden mixing and matching of different species´ genes can create genetic super
Using a new approach for dissecting the complicated interactions among many genes, scientists at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have discovered how a common cancer gene works in tandem with another gene to spur the unchecked growth of cells. The researchers say the technique was so useful in solving a longstanding puzzle that it may expedite the discovery of other such gene interactions that lead to cancer, and could accelerate the development of new cancer drugs.
The report in the Aug
New research from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has identified two genes that play key roles in regulating blood vessel development.
The research appears in two reports published in the Aug. 15 issue of Molecular and Cellular Biology, a professional journal. Dr. Cam Patterson, professor of medicine and director of the Carolina Cardiovascular Biology Center and a member of the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, led both studies.
Both research papers
Researchers in a University of Chicago lab are peering inside the minds of European starlings to find out how they recognize songs and in the process are providing insights into how the brain learns, recognizes and remembers complex sounds at the cellular level. In a study published in the Aug. 7, 2003, issue of Nature, the researchers show how songs that birds have learned to recognize trigger responses both in individual neurons and in populations of neurons in the bird’s brain.
“We found
It may be a right-handed world, but recent Purdue University research indicates that the first building blocks of life were lefties – and suggests why, on a molecular level, all living things remain southpaws to this day.
In findings that may shed light on the earliest days of evolutionary history, R. Graham Cooks and a team of Purdue chemists have reported experiments that suggest why all 20 of the amino acids that comprise living things exhibit “left-handed chirality,” which refe
Why are elephants bigger than mice? The main reason is that mice have fewer cells. Research published in Journal of Biology this week uncovers a key pathway that controls the number of cells in an animal, thereby controlling its size.
Ernst Hafen and his colleagues from the University of Zürich used fruit flies to investigate the role of the insulin-signalling pathway and in particular a molecule called FOXO. If insulin signalling is reduced, for example by starving developing fly lar
How did life begin? What chemical combination launched the first organism with self-contained metabolism? And then what happened? Researchers in Robert H. White’s group at Virginia Tech are tracing the family tree of life on earth by tracing the biochemical mechanisms within the cell – specifically those that are used in the formation of peptide bonds.
The building blocks of enzymatic and functional structures in living organisms are proteins created by linking amino acids into pepti
University of Michigan Kellogg Eye Center scientists have been studying a family whose members have an eye disease that looks like age-related macular degeneration (AMD), but that has a rarer pattern of inheritance that results in an exceptionally high incidence of the disease among family members in the study.
In the August issue of Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science (IOVS), Kellogg scientist Radha Ayyagari, Ph.D., and her collaborators from the U-M and other institutions identify
Scientists often look to nature for inspiration in the search for ways to make new materials. A new study of the clamworm, an intertidal creature, shows that it has jaws made partly of zinc, making them strong, stiff and tough –– fundamental properties by which all materials are evaluated.
The properties of the clamworm jaws are described in this week´s online publication of the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences (PNAS). The research began with questions by scientists a
The promise of the genomics revolution – the ability to compare important genes and proteins from many different organisms – is that such detailed knowledge will produce new scientific insights that will improve human quality of life. In work on a key human enzyme, PBGS (porphobilinogen synthase), the laboratory of Fox Chase Cancer Center scientist Eileen K. Jaffe, Ph.D., has characterized a rare mutation that results in an unprecedented rearrangement of the enzyme´s structure. The discovery provides
Since the time when humans first learned to record their thoughts in written form, codes have kept sensitive information from prying eyes. But conveying information through a code requires someone who can read it as well as write it. The same is true for one of nature´s methods for transmitting information that activates or silences a gene: the “histone code.”
First formally proposed in 2000 by C. David Allis, Ph.D., and his postdoctoral fellow Brian Strahl, Ph.D., the histone code is
Scientists have inactivated almost three-quarters of all genes in the genome of Arabidopsis thaliana, a species widely used in plant research. The feat, which results in the largest so-called “knockout” gene collection of a complex multi-cellular organism, now allows researchers to study the function of each of those genes individually or together.
The findings, published in the August 1 issue of the journal Science, mark an important milestone in the field of plant genomics. Follow
Finding will aid drug design to combat depression, stroke and diabetes. Scientists are a step closer to understanding how essential nutrients, vitamins and minerals are ferried into cells.
For the first time, a member of the Major Facilitator Superfamily (MFS) of transport proteins, found in almost every form of life, has been visualised by researchers from Imperial College London and the University of California, Los Angeles.
Reporting in Science today, the researchers reve
A signal that triggers half the stem cells in the developing brain to commit suicide at a stage where their survival will likely do more harm than good has been identified by researchers at the Medical College of Georgia and the University of Georgia.
Identifying the factors that result in the timely, massive cell suicide is important to understanding the developmental puzzle, the researchers say of the work featured on the cover of the Aug. 4 issue of the Journal of Cell Biology.
Introduction – Enzymology in 2003
Why the 90th anniversary of v = Vmax x [S] / (Km + [S]) is as important as the 50th anniversary of the double-helical structure of DNA. Enzymology is essential, to find out how nucleic acids fulfil their biological functions. Moreover, genome analysis will always, at some stage in the process, have to advance from sequence gazing to enzymology, since the objective of the analysis must be to identify the reactions mediated by the products of each open
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