’Hyperactive’ antifreeze protein has eluded researchers for more than 30 years

A surprising discovery by Queen’s researchers helps explain why fish swimming in icy sea water don’t freeze.

The team, led by Biochemistry Professor Peter Davies, has identified a new “antifreeze” protein found in the blood of winter flounder enabling the fish to withstand temperatures as low as -1.9 degrees Celsius: the freezing point of sea water. The antifreeze plasma protei

Such research could offer important evolutionary insights into the nature of intelligence in primates

Until now, primatologists believed lemurs to be primitive, ancient offshoots of the primate family tree, with far less intelligence than their more sophisticated cousins, monkeys, apes and humans. But at the Duke University Primate Center, with the gentle touch of his nose to a computer screen, the ringtail lemur called Aristides is teaching psychologist Elizabeth Brannon a startling

Animals often house substantial microbial populations within their bodies. While in some cases the microorganisms are necessary for host survival or reproduction, in the preponderance of cases they are not. It is of great interest to understand whether facultative associations with microorganisms ever benefit the host in lesser ways. Previously, a facultative symbiont was identified in pea aphid which was associated with host plant specialization – there was a dramatic increase in fecundity on clover

At a microscopic level, water molecules behave rather like the needle of a compass. Just as the needle moves when surrounded by a magnetic field (such as that of the Earth), water molecules move slightly in one direction when there is an electric field. Or at least that is what physicists thought till now. Research at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona has shown that, in water trapped in the bubbles of a detergent, it is not quite like that: water molecules have a surprising ability to organize th

A new Mayo Clinic study shows that couples using in vitro fertilization have the same likelihood of successful pregnancy whether the sperm used is frozen or fresh. Researchers presented the results today at the annual scientific meeting of the American Urological Association in San Francisco.

“Without these data, we were concerned that frozen sperm might reduce the birth rate,” says Alan Thornhill, Ph.D., senior author of the study and director of the Mayo Clinic in vitro fertilization labor

Concerns that resulted in moratorium on laparoscopic procedure resolved

When performed by experienced surgeons, minimally invasive laparoscopic surgery is a safe and effective alternative to standard open surgery for most patients with cancer that is confined to the colon.

That is the main finding of a seven-year international study, which will be published in the May 13 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. The study involves 872 patients with colon cancer and is th

A team of investigators at The Scripps Research Institute and its Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology in La Jolla, California has modified a form of the bacterium Escherichia coli to use a 22-amino acid genetic code.

“We have demonstrated the simultaneous incorporation of two unnatural amino acids into the same polypeptide,” says Professor Peter G. Schultz, Ph.D., who holds the Scripps Family Chair in Chemistry at Scripps Research. “Now that we know the genetic code is amenable to expans

Scientists discover a whole new dimension to platelets

Until recently, the story on platelets was pretty simple: tiny blood cells, with limited sophistication because they had no nucleus, and their claim to fame was to be a first-responder to a wound site, to promote healthy clotting and prevent infection. Later scientists theorized platelets might be connected to harmful chronic inflammation, but the links were unclear.

In a paper published in the prestigious scientific jou

The dream of saving and sharing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data is quickly becoming a reality, according to Dartmouth researchers who run the fMRI Data Center, which archives and distributes the raw data from studies that track brain activity using fMRI. The Dartmouth researchers wrote an essay in the May issue of Nature Neuroscience about the initial reluctance and gradual acceptance of the center, and they describe the many attributes a center such as theirs offers the scientific

More than one in 25 young adults in the United States is infected with the organism that causes the sexually transmitted disease known as chlamydia, according to the latest results from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, a continuing University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill investigation.

If not detected and treated, chlamydia, which usually has no symptoms, can cause pelvic inflammatory disease, ectopic pregnancy and infertility.

The prevalence of chlamydial

Individuals who have a variation of the COX-2 gene have an associated lower risk for a heart attack or stroke, according to a study in the May 12 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

Although myocardial infarction (MI, or heart attack) and atherothrombotic ischemic stroke are thought to be caused by rupture of vulnerable atherosclerotic plaques, they are recognized to be complex disorders that likely result from multifaceted interactions between an individual’s

Research News from Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry

A previously unknown synthetic “designer” steroid has been identified as tetrahydrogestrinone (THG). Researchers working out of the UCLA Olympic Analytical Laboratory in Los Angeles synthesized and characterized the “New Chemical Entity”, and proceeded to develop a rapid and accurate urine detection test for it. Details of the research are published this week in Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry.

In June 20

Cancer, along with heart and vascular disease, is the major cause of death in the Western world. The first generation of anti-cancer drugs has already saved many lives, but because these medicines are non-specific they also often have severe side effects. Researchers at VIB (the Flanders Interuniversity Institute for Biotechnology) are now developing ‘nanobodies’ − a new generation of drugs consisting of extremely small antibodies that target tumour cells very specifically.

The vast ma

Skeletal muscle has a remarkable capacity to regenerate following exercise or injury and harbors two different types of adult stem cells to accomplish the job: satellite cells and adult stem cells that can be isolated as side population (SP) cells. A certain group of these stem cells is involved in muscle tissue repair, but is only triggered into the muscle cell development pathway by injury. The question then arises: what molecular factors turn these adult stem cells into muscle cells? Now Michael

Among the model systems for studying development, the zebrafish has become prized because its transparent embryo develops outside the mother’s body. The zebrafish has helped biologists identify many genes involved in embryogenesis and, because it’s a vertebrate animal, has become a valuable resource for identifying genes involved in human disease. Zebrafish are the focus of two research articles and an accompanying news feature in this issue of PLoS Biology.

Thomas Bartman and colleagues us

In an article published in the May 2004 issue of The American Naturalist, Wilte G. Zijlstra (University of Leiden), Marc J. Steigenga (University of Leiden), P. Bernhardt Koch (University of Erlangen), Bas Zwaan (University of Leiden), and Paul M. Brakefield (University of Leiden) explore the relationship between hormones and environmental adaptation in butterflies.

Hormones are crucial for the development of organisms. In the tropical butterfly, Bicyclus anynana, ecdysone affects eyespot si