Life Sciences and Chemistry

Scientists from Imperial College London and King’s College London have identified a molecule that helps to wire up the neural circuitry responsible for controlling the movement of muscle.

Writing today in the journal Neuron, the researchers describe how the signalling protein named WNT-3 directs specific neurons during embryonic development to make the correct connections in the spine to form a neural pathway that controls muscle.

Using mice, which offer the closest model to human

In the quest to repair damaged DNA – a process believed crucial in combating ailments ranging from cancer to aging – antioxidant has been the Holy Grail. But findings published this week in Nature suggest oxidation isn’t always the enemy.

Scientists at Michigan State University, along with colleagues in England, have uncloaked a mechanism that uses oxygen to repair DNA – until now an unlikely part of the restorative recipe. Their work is published in the Sept. 12 issue of the British sc

Cornell University entomologists have unlocked an evolutionary secret to how insects evolve into new species. The discovery has major implications for the control of insect populations through disruption of mating, suggesting that over time current eradication methods could become ineffective, similar to the way insects develop pesticide resistance.

The researchers, led by Wendell L. Roelofs, the Liberty Hyde Bailey Professor of Insect Biochemistry at Cornell, made the discovery while exami

DNA has an oscillating double-helix structure. This oscillating means that the DNA molecules conduct electricity much less well than was previously thought. Ultrafast cameras were one of the devices the researchers from Amsterdam used to demonstrate this.

It turns out the DNA does not have a rigid regular structure as stated in textbooks. In reality the double helix of DNA forms a very dynamic chaotic system. The rigid structure in textbooks should be regarded as the average position of many

Developing countries stand to profit most from advances in genome science, write Samuel Broder, Stephen Hoffman and Peter Hotez in this month’s issue of EMBO reports (EMBO reports September, 2002 pp 806–812). They claim that biotechnology coupled with genomics might emerge as the key technology in the 21st century for improving global health and probably even avoiding major political conflicts and wars.

The authors warn that we must no longer view the diseases of the developing world in

A Surrey scientist claims to have an answer to what is often considered to be the hardest problem in science (sometimes just known as the “Hard Problem”): why we are aware.

Johnjoe McFadden, Professor of Molecular Genetics at the University of Surrey, has previously proposed that consciousness is generated by the brain’s electromagnetic field, the cemi field. The cemi field theory – that our thoughts are electric fields in the brain – has generated a lot of interest both in the UK and across