It’s been something of a mystery to scientists – how are blind mice able to synchronize their biological rhythms to day and night? New research by a team of scientists, including one from the University of Toronto, seems to have uncovered the answer.
Rods and cones in the outer retina are the eyes’ main photoreceptors, explains Nicholas Mrosovsky, professor emeritus in zoology at U of T. When these rods and cones degenerate, mammals and animals become blind. Despite this, however, some ani
A new species of the gentian family gets a Potteresque name
Harry Potter’s influence pervades even the science of plant taxonomy at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. Lena Struwe, assistant professor of ecology, evolution and natural resources at Rutgers’ Cook College – and a fan of the fictional young wizard – has shared in the discovery of a rare, new jungle plant that now bears a Potteresque name.
The new species, Macrocarpaea apparata , is descr
Dutch researcher Chris Molenaar has made the rapid movements of proteins, DNA and RNA molecules visible in living cells. With this technique researchers can study the dynamics of biomolecules in their natural environment.
Molenaar developed a method which makes it possible to follow the movements of RNA molecules in living cells. The researcher also made the movements and interactions between proteins in living cells visible with the aid of the revolutionary “Green Fluorescent Protein”.
DNA repair enzymes do a much better job of repairing damaged genes if they are facing in one direction instead of the other. This and other details of how DNA repair is performed are reported in the online version of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by researchers at Washington State University and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.
According to the new study, the repair enzymes “distinguish” between various positions and may be two to three
Protein could provide clues for understanding type two diabetes
Along the multifaceted insulin pathway, Dartmouth Medical School biochemists have found a missing link that may spark the connection for glucose to move into cells. The discovery is another strand in the remarkable web of molecular signals that regulate traffic through cells and helps elucidate crucial aspects of how the hormone insulin regulates a membrane movement process.
The work is being discussed June 21 at
Researchers at the Fritz-Haber Institute in Berlin have recently discovered chemical-thermal-mechanical oscillations that show, indirectly, the rate of certain reactions.
The pattern formation of a catalytic surface reaction is influenced by the temperature at which the reaction takes place. If the temperature of the surface is changed, then the course of the chemical processes changes as well. In extreme cases this change can lead to front formation, i.e. patterns, or, for example,
Animal Models Offer Newborn Opportunity to Permanently Rescue Insulin-making Cells and Possibly Even Protect Against Future Onset
A common condition that leads to low birthweight babies may predispose the infants to obesity and diabetes later in life by denying cells in the pancreas access to the chemical signals they need to mature, according to researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. Moreover, the condition, which they have successfully modeled in rodents
After seven years of work, researchers have succeeded in deducing the three-dimensional structure of an elusive and complex protein enzyme that is central to regulating the body’s largest family of receptors. These receptors, called G-protein-coupled receptors, nestle in the cell membrane and respond to external chemical signals such as hormones and neurotransmitters, to switch on cell machinery.
The thousands of such receptors throughout the body play a fundamental role in the mechan
One of the potential risks associated with the wider release of genetically modified crops and their use in mainstream agriculture is the hybridisation of transgenic plants with their wild relatives. Previous studies on mechanisms for the escape of transgenic material into the wild population have focused on pollen dispersal as the main route, but new work by scientists at the Université de Lille in France to be published in Proceedings B, a Royal Society journal, highlights the role of seed dispers
Researchers looking inside a pathogenic soil bacterium have found an organelle, a subcellular pouch, existing independently from the plasma membrane. The discovery within a prokaryotic organism challenges the theory on the origin of eukaryotic organelles and suggests a targeted approach to killing many disease-causing organisms.
“The organelle we found in the bacterium Agrobacterium tumefaciens is practically identical to the organelle called acidocalcisome in unicellular eukaryotes,” said R
Many of the body’s responses to large changes in environmental light are controlled by a newly discovered light detection system in the eye, scientists report today.
Researchers from the UK, Canada, the USA and Germany reveal that the eye’s brightness detection system helps set the body’s internal clock, regulate general activity levels and control the size of the pupil.
The new brightness detector system is based upon a molecule sensitive to blue light called opsin,
Long ago genetic engineering got deep reach into pharmacological and food industry, agriculture and medicine. The trees are no exclusion, but genetic engineers started to deal with them approximately ten years later than with other objects: the trees are too difficult for genetic investigations and manipulations. The wood plant genetic engineering activities are now in full swing in different countries of the world, including Russia. When improving trees through classical selection methods, the resea
Many creatures including our fellow primates the New World Monkeys rely on highly specific scent molecules called pheromones to find a suitable mate. Even our humble mammal cousin, the mouse, was found to have 140 genes just for pheromone receptors when its genome was completely sequenced earlier this year.
But humans are clueless when it comes to pheromone signals, according to University of Michigan evolutionary biologist Jianzhi “George” Zhang. He believes color vision put our pheromones
Some people can burn the midnight oil, while others might prefer to tackle their challenges early in the morning. Although most people know instinctively if they are an ‘evening’ or ‘morning’ person, scientists have now discovered why we fall into a certain category.
Scientists at the University of Surrey, in co-operation with clinical colleagues at St Thomas’’s Hospital (London) and Hospital de Gelderse Vallei (Netherlands), have discovered a correlation between a difference in th
Putting to rest years of controversy, an international research team led by Johns Hopkins scientists has discovered that the eye’s job of detecting light is most likely carried out by just three cell types.
Writing in the June 15 advance online section of Nature, the team reports that rods, cones and special retinal cells that make a protein called melanopsin together account for the entirety of a mouse’s reaction to light levels. Others have proposed a role for cells that make proteins cal
Researchers at the University of Rochester have produced compelling evidence of how the hand of natural selection caused one species of fruit fly to split into two more than 2 million years ago. The study, appearing in today’s issue of Nature, answers one of evolutionary biologists’ most basic questions–how do species divide–by looking at the very DNA responsible for the division. Understanding why certain genes evolve the way they do during speciation can shed light on some of the least
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