Which design principles unify the diversity of life on earth? To understand how biological designs emerged by natural selection, biomechanics studies organisms by applying engineering science and mechanics. Biomechanics studies life from molecules to ecosystems. Questions range ‘how do cells form tissue’, over ‘what shapes a muscle’ to ‘how do animals fly’ and ‘which mechanical constraints govern body shape and -dynamics when animals increase in size’. Biomechanics is applied not only to extant b
Living organisms operate with a variety of tens of thousands of protein structures and, though much research has been done on individual protein systems, little is understood about how different protein systems interact. Now an effort at Texas A&M University is bringing together all known information in an extensive, searchable internet site called Binding Interface Database.
“No one understands the rules of protein interaction,” said Dr. Jerry Tsai, Texas Agricultural Experiment Stat
Most people who get too hot and thirsty this summer can quickly grab a cool drink. Not so for plants. Their roots keep them lingering in stressful situations – sometimes to death. Now a Texas A&M University researcher has identified a system in a mutant arabidopsis, a type of weed, that signals to its cells to go on hold until stressful situations pass.
The involvement of “ER stress signal pathway” in plant stress adaptation was discovered by Dr. Hisashi Koiwa, assistant professor of
Dopamine and serotonin, two neurotransmitters in the central nervous system, are intimately involved in muscle control, memory, sleep, and emotional behavior. They are also linked to illnesses such as Parkinson’s disease and mood disorders. Now, regulation of longevity may be added to this list.
Three natural variants in the gene for DOPA decarboxylase (DDC), an enzyme required for the production of dopamine and serotonin, together accounted for 15 percent of the genetic contributio
A multi-institutional team of scientists has gained important new knowledge about the regulatory role played in Alzheimer’s disease by Pin1, a protein that coaxes other proteins into untwisting. The research is published in the July 31 issue of Nature.
The team of researchers, including a group from the Department of Human Genetics at Emory University School of Medicine, examined slices of brain and found an inverse relationship between the abundance of Pin1 and both the susceptibili
Researchers have found they can control the size of densely packed DNA structures by changing the salt concentration in solutions containing DNA. The finding could improve the efficiency of gene delivery for medical treatment and disease prevention.
Scientists are seeking to understand the natural mechanism of DNA condensation into nanostructures — in particular, toroids, which look like tightly wound garden hoses. Densely packed DNA is nature’s efficient way of transporting genetic
A study by Princeton University scientists has shown that bacteria actively move around their environments to form social organizations. The researchers placed bacteria in minute mazes and found that they sought each other out using chemical signals.
Biologists have become increasingly aware of social interactions among bacteria, but previously believed that clusters formed only when bacteria randomly landed somewhere, then multiplied into dense populations. The discovery that they a
Northwestern University researchers have found that caspases, a family of protein-cutting enzymes involved in programmed cell death (apoptosis), may be a missing link in the chain of molecular events leading to Alzheimer´s disease.
Alzheimer´s disease is a neurodegenerative condition affecting an estimated 4 million Americans that causes memory loss and, ultimately, dementia. Patients with this disease have abnormal deposits (plaques) of protein fragments called amyloid-beta surrounding
Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas have discovered a way to inhibit a biochemical process that accompanies labor and to postpone delivery for one to two days in pregnant mice.
“Since the biochemical steps associated with labor are likely the same in both mice and humans, a similar treatment might someday help prevent pre-term labor in women,” said Dr. Carole Mendelson, professor of biochemistry and obstetrics and gynecology and senior author of the study, publish
A single gene, called PHANTASTICA (PHAN), controls whether a plant makes feathery leaves like a tomato or umbrella-like leaves like Oxalis. The same mechanism is shared by a wide group of flowering plants.
“It’s a very surprising finding, that modifying one gene in the tomato alters the leaf from one form to another,” said Neelima Sinha, a professor of plant biology at UC Davis who is senior author on the paper.
Plant leaves fall into two main groups: simple, single-bl
Nitric Oxide regulates stem cell division in the adult brain; Strategy seen for repairing brain damage caused by neurodegenerative disease and stroke
Most neurons in the mammalian brain are produced during embryonic development. However, several regions of the adult brain continue to spawn large numbers of neurons through the proliferation of neural stem cells. Moreover, it is becoming clear that these new neurons are integrated into existing brain circuitry.
Now, researcher
Females prefer burrows
The signal is an arched wall of sand called a hood which courting males of the fiddler crab Uca musica build at the entrances to their burrows on sand flats in Panama. Males have one very large claw that they wave to attract females to their burrows and females visit several males before choosing a mate by staying with a male in his burrow. These small crabs are at great risk of predation from ever-present shore birds. When moving between burrows they reduce th
Nanotechnology is an emerging range of technologies in which medicine and engineering meet physics and chemistry. Nanotechnology supporters claim that the machines and materials it may produce will mean faster computers, less pollution and cheaper energy, and longer and healthier lives.
Critics, however – from Prince Charles to Jurassic Park author Michael Crichton – fear that nanomachines could run amok and turn the surface of the Earth into an uninhabitable morass. Environmentalists
A study of microbes that thrive in hot, acidic conditions has overturned a long-held view that species of micro-organisms do not differ by geographic location like other forms of life. The research by the University of Cincinnati and the University of California-Berkeley has just been published online by the journal Science.
When it comes to plant life and animal life, a species usually shows genetic differences in different parts of the world. For the tiny form of life known as micro-org
Some thirty million species now live on Earth, but their spatial distribution is highly uneven. Biologists since Darwin have been asking why. Now, scientists funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), have discovered part of the answer: how plant and animal communities originally assembled is a predictor of future biodiversity and ecosystem productivity.
“Despite its importance, species diversity has proven difficult to understand, in large part because multiple processes operating at
Scientists at the MPI-CBG in Dresden and EMBL in Heidelberg map forces that help cells divide
“Cells obey the laws of physics and chemistry,” begins a famous biology textbook, and one of the main goals of molecular biology is to link the properties of single molecules to the behavior of cells and the lives of organisms. So it is probably no surprise that an important new discovery about the physical forces that underlie cell division comes from a physics student-turned biologist, usi
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