Life Sciences and Chemistry
Articles and reports from the Life Sciences and chemistry area deal with applied and basic research into modern biology, chemistry and human medicine.
Valuable information can be found on a range of life sciences fields including bacteriology, biochemistry, bionics, bioinformatics, biophysics, biotechnology, genetics, geobotany, human biology, marine biology, microbiology, molecular biology, cellular biology, zoology, bioinorganic chemistry, microchemistry and environmental chemistry.
Natural selection’s fingerprint identified on fruit fly evolution
Researchers at the University of Rochester have produced compelling evidence of how the hand of natural selection caused one species of fruit fly to split into two more than 2 million years ago. The study, appearing in today’s issue of Nature, answers one of evolutionary biologists’ most basic questions–how do species divide–by looking at the very DNA responsible for the division. Understanding why certain genes evolve the way they do during speciation can shed light on some of the least
Birth of a neuron: Imaging technique tracks nervous systemgrowth and repair, Cornell-Harvard group reports
A biomedical-imaging technique that would highlight the cytoskeletal infrastructure of nerve cells and map the nervous system as it develops and struggles to repair itself has been proposed by biophysics researchers at Cornell and Harvard universities.
Reporting in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS June 10, 2003) , the researchers say that besides the new imaging technique’s obvious applications in studying the dynamics of nervous system development, it could answer the
Brain cells seen recycling rapidly to speed communications
The tiny spheres inside brain cells that ferry chemical messengers into the synapse make their rounds much more expeditiously than once assumed, National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) – funded researchers have discovered. They used a dye to track the behavior of such synaptic vesicles in real time, in rat brain cells. Rather than fusing completely with the cell membrane and disgorging their dye contents all at once, brain vesicles more often remained intact, secreting only part of the tracer car
Possible New Cell Type Found in Developing Inner Ear
The answer to how the complex, cavernous inner ear forms from a mostly homogenous group of cells may be that it doesn’t, says a Medical College of Georgia researcher who has found a new cell type that appears to migrate to the developing ear.
Dr. Paul Sohal first saw the cells he named ventrally emigrating neural tube cells in 1995, following the path of newly formed nerves out of the developing neural tube.
His research published in the June issue of the International Journal of D
Answer to age old question: Is visual recognition by wholes or by parts?
In Letter to Nature, NYU and Syracuse neuroscientists prove that we read by detecting simple features
Do we visually recognize things — words or faces — by wholes or by parts? Denis Pelli of New York University and Bart Farell of Syracuse University have answered that question in their forthcoming Letter to Nature. Their article, “The Remarkable Inefficiency of Word Recognition,” is accompanied by a “News and Views” piece discussing their work.
Using the example of letters
Barrel structure in globular proteins may transport small molecules
The ability of proteins to guide small molecules to reaction sites and across membranes is essential to many metabolic pathways, but the process is not well understood. Now, scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have shown that a globular protein with a barrel structure can direct small molecules in much the same fashion as a membrane protein.
Chemistry professor Zaida Luthey-Schulten, graduate student Rommie Amaro, and Emad Tajkhorshid, assistant director of physics