Life Sciences and Chemistry

Were the first macromolecules created on a primitive beach?

In order for life to emerge both peptides and nucleic acids must have appeared under “prebiotic” conditions. Despite numerous efforts, the formation of these macromolecules without the help of modern synthetic reagents has not been achieved in a laboratory. Now for the first time researchers have proposed a mechanism by which the formation of peptides could have occurred under prebiotic conditions. Reporting their findings in

A WCS scientist working in southeastern Tanzania has rediscovered a carnivore that has remained undetected for the last 70 years. Photographed by a camera trap on the eastern side of Udzungwa Mountain National Park, the Lowe’s servaline genet – a three-foot-long relative of the mongoose family – was previously known only from a single skin collected in 1932.

“This is the first ever photograph of Lowe’s servaline genet and confirms the animal’s existence after seventy years,”

New Findings Reveal That The Regulation Of Gene Expression Is Much Less Strictly Controlled Than Was Previously Thought

The inaugural issue of Journal of Biology features groundbreaking research that challenges the traditional view of how genes are controlled. Our current understanding of gene expression, the fundamental process by which proteins are made from the instructions encoded in DNA, is that the process is tightly controlled so that the correct amount of each protein is prod

‘Golden approach’ human proteine classification
Proteomics on a chip

Knowledge of the human proteome may provide us with even more insight than knowledge of DNA. This ‘protein blueprint’ of a human contains valuable information about cell properties and disease causes. A single cell, however, already consists of several thousands of proteines. To be able to classify them, dr. Richard Schasfoort of the University of Twente is developing a special chip, able to make hundreds or tho

João Pedro Magalhães, researcher in the Biology of Aging, suggests, in work published in the June edition of the magazine “Experimental Gerontology” and entitled “The evolution of mammalian aging”, that the study of certain species of reptiles and amphibians that apparently do not age could lead to discoveries about aging.

For this Portuguese scientist the secret of eternal youth could be in the relationship, already scientifically shown, between the size and longevity of different species

Finding may help explain related conditions in people

Inactivating just one of more than two dozen similar genes can cause temporary but profound hair loss, known as alopecia, in mice, researchers from Johns Hopkins and the Pasteur Institute in France report in the June issue of Genes & Development.
Surprisingly, the impact of loss of this keratin 17 gene (K17) depended on an animal’s genetic make-up: its loss caused no effect in one strain of mice and complete alopecia in an