Life Sciences and Chemistry

Scientists at the MPI-CBG in Dresden and EMBL in Heidelberg map forces that help cells divide

“Cells obey the laws of physics and chemistry,” begins a famous biology textbook, and one of the main goals of molecular biology is to link the properties of single molecules to the behavior of cells and the lives of organisms. So it is probably no surprise that an important new discovery about the physical forces that underlie cell division comes from a physics student-turned biologist, usi

Researchers have discovered a novel class of compounds that affects the cell’s garbage disposal system which degrades proteins and opens a window for understanding a vital cell function as well as for treating heart disease and cancer.

The distinctive mechanisms of these compounds are reported in the July 29 issue of Biochemistry and online earlier this month by Dr. Michael Simons, professor of medicine and of pharmacology and toxicology at Dartmouth Medical School and head of ca

Professor Lance Lanyon, Principal of The Royal Veterinary College, Karla Lee, Helen Jessop, Rosemary Suswillo, Gul Zaman from the Department of Basic Sciences at The Royal Veterinary College have shown in their research that the Estrogen Receptor has a fundamental role in bone cells by adjusting the bone architecture to match the loads individuals place on them. Their paper is published in the latest edition of Nature.

The strain imposed by mechanical loading on bone tissue normally stimulat

The scientist from the Institute of Plants and Animals Ecology, Russian Academy of Sciences (Ural Branch), has made a description of the giant dear remains, found in the Ural, and has determined their age. Giant deer Megaloceros giganteus originated as a species in the preglacial epoch, lived through the glaciation period and died out about 8-9 thousand years ago after the climate had become warmer. The remains will help to investigate how the giant dear lived and why this species disappeared. The r

For decades, scientists have hunted for signals that guide nerve cells’ tentacle-like axons, hoping to understand how these cell tips reach out to distant targets. It’s knowledge that might one day help researchers learn how to rebuild nerves lost to spinal cord injuries or diseases like Huntington’s.

Now, a Johns Hopkins team studying a family of proteins best known for repelling axons and inhibiting their growth reports finding one member that unexpectedly promotes axon growth ins

Disrupted-In-Schizophrenia 1 (DISC1) was identified as a novel gene disrupted by a (1;11)(q42.1;q14.3) translocation that segregated with schizophrenia in a Scottish family. Predicted DISC1 product has no significant homology to other known proteins. Here, Dr. Katayama and colleagues in Osaka, Japan, demonstrated the existence of DISC1 protein and identified fasciculation and elongation protein zeta-1 (FEZ1) as an interacting partner of DISC1 by a yeast two-hybrid study. FEZ1 and its nematode homolog