…ever created with Save Our Seas Foundation and UMass Amherst. New interactive models, including the great white shark, free and publicly available, bring the evolution, adaptations of sharks and rays to life. Ground-breaking 3D interactive shark imagery created by a University of Massachusetts Amherst biology professor is powering a new World of Sharks website launched by the Save Our Seas Foundation to inform the public on the critical role sharks play in the world’s oceans. The Save Our Seas Foundation…
In the animal world, you don’t need to learn a numeral system – such as the ten-digit Indo-Arabic system we commonly use – to be able to count. Animals constantly use numerical information from their environment to make decisions. Estimating the number of conspecifics in a competing group before engaging in conflict, the amount of food available in a difficult-to-reach location, or the number of potential sexual partners in a new territory is essential for survival and reproduction. This skill…
Structure of an enzyme crucial for tRNA maturation sheds light on cause of neurodegenerative disorders. In all living organisms, the biomolecule transfer RNA (tRNA) plays a fundamental role in protein production. tRNAs are generated from precursor molecules in several steps. The enzyme tRNA splicing endonuclease (TSEN), among other things, catalyzes one step in this process. Mutations in TSEN lead to a neurodegenerative disorder called pontocerebellar hypoplasia, which is associated with severe disabilities and early death. Researchers at Goethe University Frankfurt…
A team led by Prof. Ryan Gilmour at the Organic Chemistry Institute at the University of Münster has reported in “Nature Communications” on the rapid generation of new fluorinated molecular fragments for drug discovery using organocatalysis. Fluorine is found rarely in naturally occurring organic molecules. However, this chemical element is indispensable for the production of pharmaceuticals or agrochemicals. Synthetic chemistry has an important role to play in the development of new fluorine-containing molecular fragments. Simple, modular synthesis strategies are extremely…
The signal, produced by neurons, helps the barrier form and maintain its protective properties. At a glance: Working with mice and zebrafish, researchers identify a gene, expressed in neurons, that produces a signal needed for development and maintenance of the blood-brain barrier. When mutated, the gene makes certain regions of the blood-brain barrier more permeable. The findings could help scientists control the blood-brain barrier — important for delivering drugs into the central nervous system or countering damage from neurodegenerative disease…
How severe psychological stress impairs bone growth and fracture healing. A study at Ulm University and its Medical Centre has uncovered the molecular mechanisms by which psychological trauma and other massively stressful experiences slow down the healing of bone fractures. The research team, which included scientists from Canada and Japan, was able to demonstrate that certain immune cells respond to stress by producing an enzyme, which in turn promotes the release of stress hormones. These stress hormones act locally on…
Researchers developed a new method called wildDISCO that uses standard antibodies to map the entire body of an animal using fluorescent markers. This revolutionary technique provides detailed 3D maps of structures, shedding new light on complex biological systems and diseases. WildDISCO has the potential to transform our understanding of intricate processes in health and disease and paves the way for exciting advancements in medical research. This technology was now introduced in Nature Biotechnology. In the past, scientists relied on genetically…
Nitric oxide (NO) is a central molecule in the global cycling of nitrogen, and also toxic. Little is known about if and how microbes can use NO as a substrate for growth. Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen, Germany, have now managed to grow a microbial community dominated by two, so-far unknown species on NO for more than four years (and counting) and study their metabolism in great detail. Their research, now published in in…
Scientists have unveiled a new mechanism that plants use to sense temperature. This finding could lead to solutions to counteract some of the deleterious changes in plant growth, flowering and seed production due to climate change. The results are published today in PNAS. The rise of temperatures worldwide due to climate change is having detrimental consequences for plants. They tend to flower earlier than before and rush through the reproductive process, which translates into less fruits and less seeds and…
…in children with mitochondrial disorders. One of the first human studies on how mitochondrial function impacts immune cells to guide future treatments. In a new study, National Institutes of Health (NIH) researchers found that altered B cell function in children with mitochondrial disorders led to a weaker and less diverse antibody response to viral infections. The study, published in Frontiers in Immunology was led by researchers at the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), who analyzed gene activity of immune cells in…
An international team of chemists led by Professors Frank Glorius (University of Münster) and Kendall N. Houk (University of California, Los Angeles, USA) has succeeded for the first time in using structural editing to insert a four-membered molecular ring into a larger, aromatic ring. This resulted in a structurally complex bicyclic ring system. Most drugs on the market consist of cyclic (ring-shaped) molecules, many of which contain multiple rings. Developing simple and powerful methods for constructing important and novel ring…
How do leafcutter ants measure the size of the leaf pieces they cut off? A study by the University of Würzburg now provides answers. Up to three million specimens, translated into human terms about twice as many inhabitants as Munich – that’s how large a single colony of leafcutter ants can become. To feed so many creatures at the same time, the animals have developed a sophisticated system: In their underground nests, they grow fungi, which they distribute to the…
Every time a stem cell divides, one daughter cell remains a stem cell while the other takes off on its own developmental journey. But both daughter cells require specific and different cellular materials to fulfill their destinies. Animal stem cells use the cytoskeleton – a transient network of structural tubules – to physically pull the correct materials from the parent cell into each daughter cell during the split. Plants also have stem cells that need to distribute different materials to…
A new study on the coexistence of bacteria and fungi shows that a mutually beneficial, functioning symbiosis can be very fragile. Researchers at the Leibniz Institute for Natural Product Research and Infection Biology (Leibniz-HKI) in Jena found out that the bacterial species Mycetohabitans rhizoxinica lives happily in the hyphae of the fungus Rhizopus microsporus only when the bacteria produce a certain protein. In a symbiosis, two organisms join together and benefit from each other; in endosymbiosis, one of the organisms…
As envisioned, first-of-its-kind African mosquito suppression system would reduce child mortality and aid economic development. Malaria remains one of the world’s deadliest diseases. Each year malaria infections result in hundreds of thousands of deaths, with the majority of fatalities occurring in children under five. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently announced that five cases of mosquito-borne malaria were detected in the United States, the first reported spread in the country in two decades. Fortunately, scientists are developing safe…
Researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces (MPICI) have designed a carbohydrate sequence capable of folding into a stable secondary structure. Until now, such self-folding biopolymers had only been developed for DNA and proteins, and sugars were previously considered too flexible to assume a stable conformation. Folded carbohydrates could open up completely new perspectives in biomedicine and materials science. Carbohydrates make up about 80 percent of the earth’s biomass – half on land and half in the…
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