St. Jude scientists say FKHR protein causes primitive cells called myoblasts to fuse, while deficiency of FKHR contributes to muscle cancer
Investigators at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital have discovered that a protein causing mature cells to commit suicide also helps primitive muscle cells called myoblasts fuse together, allowing them to develop into muscles. The finding of this unexpected new role for the protein, called FKHR, suggests that future research might offer cl
Animal behaviorists have something new to crow about.
Researchers at the University of Washington have found a species of crow that distinctly alters its behavior when attempting to steal food from another crow, depending on whether or not the other bird is a relative.
The Northwestern crow (Corvus caurinus) uses a passive strategy when it attempts to take food from kin but becomes aggressive when it tries to steal a morsel from a non-related crow. This is believed to be the
Tube worms living at deep-sea oil seeps in the Gulf of Mexico significantly alter their habitat, similar to beavers altering the flow of a river. Researchers from Pennsylvania State University have just published an important finding in the journal Ecology Letters.
A computer model of tube worm aggregations was created for Lamellibrachia luymesi, which is among the longest lived animals known. Both actual and model populations persist for centuries and take up high quantities of sulfide fro
North Carolina State University poultry scientists have developed a powerful new tool to aid the understanding of how chicken embryos develop.
The research of Dr. Paul Mozdziak, assistant professor of poultry science, and Dr. James Petitte, professor of poultry science, resulted in successfully transferring a gene into a chicken and establishing a line of chickens carrying that specific marker gene.
Currently, the chick embryo is often used as a model to understand normal a
A lack of oxygen in waters around the world could be doing more than just suffocating fish: It may be acting as an endocrine disruptor and impeding their ability to reproduce, posing a serious threat to the survival of many populations.
A new study of carp suggests that hypoxia, or oxygen deficiency, is an endocrine disruptor. The findings add a surprising member to the growing list of potential hormone-disturbing agents — a list that includes pesticides such as atrazine and DDT, various typ
Genetically altered bacterial viruses appear to be more effective than naked DNA in eliciting an immune response and could be a new strategy for a next generation of vaccines that are easy to produce and store, say researchers from Moredun Research Institute in the United Kingdom.
“In theory, millions of doses can be grown within a matter of days using simple equipment, media and procedures,” says John March, one of lead researchers presenting findings at the American Society for Microbiol
Fndings in mice hold implications for human disorders
New research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill offers an important contribution to a new wave of thinking in genetics: the idea that not all human disease states are due to alterations in DNA sequence.
A growing body of research on these “epigenetic” changes are leading geneticists to rethink the conventional view that all human disease is fundamentally tied to DNA sequence variation (changes in the actua
Studying mice, scientists from Johns Hopkins have successfully prevented a molecular event in brain cells that they’ve found is required for storing spatial memories. Unlike regular mice, the engineered rodents quickly forgot where to find a resting place in a pool of water, the researchers report in the March 7 issue of the journal Cell.
The experiments are believed to be the first to prove that subtly altering the chemistry of a certain protein can profoundly affect a brain cell’
Connections seen to X-linked mental retardation and some forms of leukemia
Most of the time, most of the estimated 35,000 genes in the human genome are silent, securely stored away in the tightly coiled structure of chromatin, which makes up chromosomes. Inside chromatin, the DNA is wound around small proteins called histones, making it unavailable to the cellular machinery that would otherwise read its coded genetic information. Specific cell and tissue types are characterized by the
Exactly fifty years ago, Watson and Crick revealed the structure of DNA, unleashing a scientific revolution. On the anniversary of that momentous discovery, the world’s leading science journal, Nature, will publish new and groundbreaking genetic research by Bangor University scientist, Dr. Isabelle Colson. Isabelle is an expert in evolutionary biology, the study of how life evolves, and for 18 months she was an invaluable part of a Manchester-based team studying mutation in yeast – a seemingly simple
Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) researches and their colleagues have discovered that escort molecules are required to usher pheromone receptors to the surface of sensory neurons where they are needed to translate chemical cues.
In an interesting twist, the researchers found that the escort molecules belong to a family of proteins, called the major histocompatibility complex (MHC), which plays an important role in the immune system. The researchers speculate that in addition to being
Scientists at the University of Manchester have turned back the evolutionary clock to reveal a hidden mechanism for differentiation between species of the same family, according to an article published in the journal Nature this week. The finding sheds new light on how different species may have arisen and questions the very notion of how we define individual species.
The work, funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and the Wellcome Trust, was c
UCLA chemists report in the Feb. 28 issue of Science a room-temperature chemical method for producing a new form of carbon called carbon nanoscrolls. Nanoscrolls are closely related to the much touted carbon nanotubes — which may have numerous industrial applications — but have significant advantages over them, said Lisa Viculis and Julia Mack, the lead authors of the Science article and graduate students in the laboratory of Richard B. Kaner, UCLA professor of chemistry and biochemistry.
Biochemist Daniel R. Gallie at the University of California, Riverside and his research team of Zhong Chen, Todd Young, Jun Ling, and Su-Chih Chang report in the March 18, 2003, issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) that they have developed technology that increases the amount of vitamin C in plants, including grains, by increasing the amount of the enzyme that is responsible for recycling vitamin C. “The ability to increase the level of vitamin C in plant food will enh
Mutants from a lowly weed. That’s where many solutions to maladies – from salt stress in plants to HIV in humans – may lie in wait for scientists to discover.
“I look for mutants. I take a sick plant and find out what’s wrong,” said Dr. Hisashi Koiwa, Texas Agricultural Experiment Station horticulturist.
It’s the Arabidopsis plant, a common weed, that attracts Koiwa and other researchers because of its simple genetic makeup. Scientists have looked at every nook and cranny of the
Unlike humans, bears seem to recover from bone loss caused by inactivity
Wild black bears may hold some secrets to preserving bone in humans.
Researchers at Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center and Michigan Technological University recently studied the animal’s unique ability to rebound from significant bone loss suffered each year during hibernation. Their study, published in the March 2003 issue of Clinical Orthopedics and Related Research, shows that wild black bea
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