A biomedical-imaging technique that would highlight the cytoskeletal infrastructure of nerve cells and map the nervous system as it develops and struggles to repair itself has been proposed by biophysics researchers at Cornell and Harvard universities.
Reporting in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS June 10, 2003) , the researchers say that besides the new imaging technique’s obvious applications in studying the dynamics of nervous system development, it could answer the
The tiny spheres inside brain cells that ferry chemical messengers into the synapse make their rounds much more expeditiously than once assumed, National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) – funded researchers have discovered. They used a dye to track the behavior of such synaptic vesicles in real time, in rat brain cells. Rather than fusing completely with the cell membrane and disgorging their dye contents all at once, brain vesicles more often remained intact, secreting only part of the tracer car
The answer to how the complex, cavernous inner ear forms from a mostly homogenous group of cells may be that it doesn’t, says a Medical College of Georgia researcher who has found a new cell type that appears to migrate to the developing ear.
Dr. Paul Sohal first saw the cells he named ventrally emigrating neural tube cells in 1995, following the path of newly formed nerves out of the developing neural tube.
His research published in the June issue of the International Journal of D
In Letter to Nature, NYU and Syracuse neuroscientists prove that we read by detecting simple features
Do we visually recognize things — words or faces — by wholes or by parts? Denis Pelli of New York University and Bart Farell of Syracuse University have answered that question in their forthcoming Letter to Nature. Their article, “The Remarkable Inefficiency of Word Recognition,” is accompanied by a “News and Views” piece discussing their work.
Using the example of letters
The ability of proteins to guide small molecules to reaction sites and across membranes is essential to many metabolic pathways, but the process is not well understood. Now, scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have shown that a globular protein with a barrel structure can direct small molecules in much the same fashion as a membrane protein.
Chemistry professor Zaida Luthey-Schulten, graduate student Rommie Amaro, and Emad Tajkhorshid, assistant director of physics
Humans became hairless to reduce the effects of the many biting flies and other disease-carrying parasites that live in fur and to enhance sexual attractiveness and selection, according to scientists from the Universities of Reading and Oxford. The new theory, which challenges the accepted view that human hairlessness evolved to control body temperature in hot climates, is to be published by the Royal Society in Biology Letters, a new companion to Proceedings: Biological Sciences.
Humans ar
Whether food-borne bacteria make people sick depends on a variety of factors, and better understanding of the infection process could lead to ways to stop such illnesses from occurring, according to Purdue University scientists.
In the first comprehensive study of the virulence of Listeria monocytogenes, researchers report that how well the bacteria attach to cells does not alone determine the degree of illness. The factors that determine if a person becomes ill and the degree of illness in
Scientists working with cells that may someday be used to replace diseased or damaged cells in the brain have taken neural stem cell technology a key step closer to the clinic.
Writing in the current online edition (June 2003) of the Journal of Neurochemistry, scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Waisman Center describe the first molecular profile for human fetal neural stem cell lines that have been coaxed to thrive in culture for more than a year.
The work is a
Cells show promise for cancer and transplant patients because of rapid growth in bone marrow
Scientists with University Health Network have discovered a new class of human stem cells that rapidly grow when implanted in the bone marrow of mice. The findings, available today in an advance on-line publication of the international scientific journal Nature Medicine, are a major advancement in human stem cell research with possible significant clinical implications for designing more effec
’Finished’ sequence reveals twice as many genes, cereal similarity
Behold a grain of rice. Inside are thousands of cells; within each cell are 12 chromosomes; and on rice’s smallest chromosome, No. 10, are about 3,500 genes and more than 22 million base pairs, the links in the chain of DNA.
So, what’s the big deal about rice’s smallest chromosome?
There are several, according to a report in the June 6 issue of the journal Science. Upon close exami
For decades, scientists have disagreed about the way the brain gathers memories, developing two apparently contradictory concepts. But newly published research by a team of scientists at Rutgers-Newark’s Center for Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience (CMBN) indicates that both models of memory may be partially correct – and that resolving this conflict could lead to new approaches for the treatment of memory disorders such as Alzheimer’s Disease.
The dispute has centered on how
Scientists announce in the current issue of the journal Nature their discovery that plants respond to environmental stresses with a sequence of molecular signals known in humans and other mammals as the “G-protein signaling pathway,” revealing that this signaling strategy has long been conserved throughout evolution. Because a large percentage of all the drugs approved for use in humans target the G-protein signaling pathway, the team’s findings could also be used in the search for plant compounds t
In plants, many proteins are degraded or activated within the vacuole, a large water and nutrient-filled vesicle found in plant cells that helps maintain the shape of plant cells and that stores food molecules. The manner by which this degradation or activation occurs, however, is uncertain.
In the June 10, 2003, issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), however, scientists from UC Riverside identify a key protein, vacuolar processing enzyme or VPEg, in Arabidops
A new way to make gold form inside the cells of a micro-organism is published today in the Institute of Physics journal Nanotechnology. Researchers from the National Chemical Laboratory and the Armed Forces Medical College, both in Pune, India, have been using “green chemistry” to develop an eco-friendly way to make tiny gold particles without using toxic chemicals.
Such gold nanoparticles of uniform size can be used in labelling proteins, nucleic acids and other biomolecules, which could l
Neurons transmit chemical signals in a fleeting “kiss-and-run” process, which in large part determines how quickly neurons can fire, according to new studies by Howard Hughes Medical Institute researchers.
The transfer of information between nerve cells occurs when chemicals called neurotransmitters are released into the synapse, the junction between neurons. Electrical impulses in the neuron cause tiny vesicles loaded with neurotransmitters to move to the tip of the nerve terminal where th
Oxford scientists have discovered a particularly macabre method one parasite (Strepsiptera) has for disguising itself in its insect host: it wraps itself in a piece of the host’s own body tissue. In this way the strepsipteran masquerades as ‘self’, and is protected from the insect’s immune system.
The mechanism whereby Strepsiptera flourish without interference from the host has so far been a mystery. Scientists have been intrigued by the exceptional diversity of host insects exploited by th
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