Virginia Tech student presents first findings at international geochemistry conference
Every living thing needs iron. The strategies some organisms use to accumulate iron can impact the quality of our environment and could be adapted for our use.
Imagine a falconer releasing his falcon to nab pigeons for his dinner. That is somewhat how the bacteria, Azotobacter vinelandii , acquire iron. They release siderophore molecules, called azotobactin, which nabs iron out of m
New polymer could prevent burns, food poisoning, traffic accidents
Imagine a fire door that changes color when hot, football jerseys that can tell when a player is overheating, road signs that change color indicating icy road conditions, and food packaging stamps that disappear when products have been kept at room temperature for too long. At the University of Rhode Island, chemists Brett Lucht and Bill Euler and chemical engineer Otto Gregory are working to make these products a real
When you gaze at a bowl of fruit, why don’t some of the bananas look red, some of the apples look purple and some of the grapes look yellow?
This question isn’t as nonsensical as it may sound. When your brain processes the information coming from your eyes, it stores the information about an object’s shape in one place and information about its color in another. So it’s something of a miracle that the shapes and colors of each fruit are combined seamlessly into distinct objects when you lo
Scientists in the past decade have discovered that remnants of ancient germ line infections called human endogenous retroviruses make up a substantial part of the human genome. Once thought to be merely “junk” DNA and inactive, many of these elements, in fact, perform functions in human cells.
Now, a new study by John McDonald of the University of Georgia and King Jordan at the National Center for Biotechnology Information at the National Institutes of Health, suggests for the first time th
Researchers in Oxford University¡¦s Department of Chemistry have devised a new method of selectively oxidising terpenes to produce compounds of particular interest to the perfumery, flavour and pharmaceutical industries.
Terpenes and their derivatives are commonly used in industry to modify flavours and fragrances, and new compounds for trial are continuously needed. The terpenes themselves are not of commercial interest, but rather the derivatives that commonly require stereoselective funct
Scientists from Baylor College of Medicine (Texas, USA) and the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute (Cambridge, UK) have deciphered how neurons can synthesize a diverse range of proteins from a relatively limited number of genes – a discovery with important implications for understanding how complex neural circuitry is formed and maintained throughout our lives.
A long-standing question in neurobiology is how each of the tens of thousands of neurons that populate the mammalian brain are instruc
Scientists have identified a key regulatory mechanism in the TGF-ß pathway. This discovery by Dr. Kai Lin and colleagues at UMASS Medical School and the University of Mississippi Medical Center helps further our understanding of how this important signaling pathway functions in a variety of cellular processes, including cancer formation and embryonic development.
The work is published in the August 1 issue of Genes & Development.
The TGF-ß pathway is an intracellular signaling pat
Rockefeller researchers discover unexpected trigger
Often in science a novel set of experiments comes along that forces researchers to abandon old models in exchange for new ones that better fit their observations. This is the case in a new Nature report by Rockefeller University researchers, which finds that past models of cellular division in the simple yeast organism were focused on the wrong protein.
Until now, scientists thought that yeast cells began dividing into two
A crucial piece of the puzzle into how the eye becomes wired to the brain has been revealed by scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif., and UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas.
In findings published in today’s edition of Neuron, the researchers report that a certain class of Eph receptors and ephrin ligands – proteins that cause cells to either repel or attract each other – control how nerve connections from the developing eye form maps that pre
A new gene shown to be essential for pollen production in flowering plants has been discovered by scientists at Penn State University. A paper describing the team’s discovery of the gene, whose activity they found is necessary for the formation of cells required for pollen production, will be published in the 1 August 2002 issue of the journal Genes and Development.
“This research is the first indication that a specific kind of protein known as a receptor-linked protein kinase, which resul
A gene thought to keep a single X chromosome turned on in mice plays no such role in humans, Johns Hopkins researchers report in the August issue of the American Journal of Human Genetics.
The finding is likely to relegate the disproven gene to relative obscurity, at least in humans, says Barbara Migeon, M.D., of the McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine, whose laboratory found the human version of the gene in 2001. It also moves the search for the gene from the X chromosome to the
Fruit rinds provide new clues about crop domestication
Distinctly sculptured opaline phytoliths in soil and plant remains tell archaeologists which plants were present thousands of years ago. However, the production and purpose of these tiny glassy structures common in plant tissues is poorly understood. Dolores Piperno at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in Panama and colleagues predict that a single genetic locus controls both lignin and phytolith production in sq
A team of researchers from The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) has discovered a way to use adult bone marrow stem cells to form new blood vessels in the eye or to deliver chemicals that will prevent the abnormal formation of new vessels.
This technique, which involves injecting the stem cells into the eye, could potentially be used to stimulate vessel growth and address inherited degenerations of the retina in the first instance, and in the second, to treat ocular diseases resulting from
Optical properties could prove useful in biomedical, nanoelectronic applications
Add fluorescence to the growing list of unique physical properties associated with carbon nanotubes — the ultrasmall, ultrastrong wunderkind of the fullerene family of carbon molecules.
In research detailed in the current issue of Science magazine, a team of Rice University chemists led by fullerene discoverer and Nobel laureate Richard Smalley describes the first observations of fluorescence
Roman A. Amosov and a team of Russian scientists from the Central Institute for Geological Exploration of Non-ferrous and Noble Metals, Institute of Paleontology, Russian Academy of Sciences, and from the Institute of Microbiology, Russian Academy of Sciences, led by, have managed to simulate in the laboratory the process of precipitation of gold which in the natural geothermal wells is promoted by blue-green algae (cyanobacteriae).
For the purposes of the experiment Vladimir Orleans
The next step in understanding what the human genome is telling us, especially
Despite some cosmetic differences, we all have the same genetic makeup that evolved from primitive man. Unfortunately, the genes that were in place before the advent of the earliest civilizations were not designed to carry individuals through today’s typical age span, now approximately eight decades of wear and tear. Additionally, the multiple genetic mutations that could survive in ancient times more than
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