06.13.11
Posted in biology at 1:00 pm by nemo
How Spiders Breathe Under Water: Spider’s Diving Bell Performs Like Gill Extracting Oxygen from Water
ScienceDaily (June 13, 2011) — Water spiders spend their entire lives under water, only venturing to the surface to replenish their diving bell air supply. Yet no one knew how long the spiders could remain submerged until Roger Seymour and Stefan Hetz measured the bubble’s oxygen level. They found that the diving bell behaves like a gill sucking oxygen from the water and the spiders only need to dash to the surface once a day to supplement their air supply.
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06.05.11
Posted in biology at 11:46 am by nemo
DNA Can Discern Between Two Quantum States, Research Shows
ScienceDaily (June 4, 2011) — Do the principles of quantum mechanics apply to biological systems? Until now, says Prof. Ron Naaman of the Institute’s Chemical Physics Department (Faculty of Chemistry), both biologists and physicists have considered quantum systems and biological molecules to be like apples and oranges. But research he conducted together with scientists in Germany, which appeared recently in Science, shows that a biological molecule — DNA — can discern between quantum states known as spin.
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05.20.11
Posted in biology at 11:39 am by nemo
New Level of Genetic Diversity Discovered in Human RNA SequencesScienceDaily (May 19, 2011) — A detailed comparison of DNA and RNA in human cells has uncovered a surprising number of cases where the corresponding sequences are not, as has long been assumed, identical. The RNA-DNA differences generate proteins that do not precisely match the genes that encode them.
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05.16.11
Posted in biology at 10:26 am by nemo
‘Master Switch’ Gene for Obesity and Diabetes DiscoveredScienceDaily (May 15, 2011) — A team of researchers, led by King’s College London and the University of Oxford, have found that a gene linked to type 2 diabetes and cholesterol levels is in fact a ‘master regulator’ gene, which controls the behaviour of other genes found within fat in the body.
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05.13.11
Posted in biology at 11:52 am by nemo
How a Flatworm Regenerates Missing Tissues: Pluripotent Adult Stem Cells Power Planarian Regeneration
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Posted in biology at 11:50 am by nemo
Whales Have Accents and Regional Dialects: Biologists Interpret the Language of Sperm Whales
ScienceDaily (May 12, 2011) — Dalhousie Ph.D. student Shane Gero has recently returned from a seven-week visit to Dominica. He has been traveling to the Caribbean island since 2005 to study families of sperm whales, usually spending two to four months of each year working on the Dominica Sperm Whale Project. One of the goals of this project is to record and compare whale calls over time, examining the various phrases and dialects of sperm whale communities.
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04.26.11
Posted in biology at 10:20 am by nemo
Decoding Human Genes Is Goal of New Open-Source EncyclopediaScienceDaily (Apr. 24, 2011) — A massive database cataloging the human genome’s functional elements — including genes, RNA transcripts, and other products — is being made available as an open resource to the scientific community, classrooms, science writers, and the public, thanks to an international team of researchers.
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01.29.11
Posted in biology at 2:16 pm by nemo
DNA Caught Rock ‘N Rollin’: On Rare Occasions DNA Dances Itself Into a Different Shape
ScienceDaily (Jan. 29, 2011) — DNA, that marvelous, twisty molecule of life, has an alter ego, research at the University of Michigan and the University of California, Irvine reveals.
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01.26.11
Posted in biology at 1:13 pm by nemo
Biologists’ Favorite Worm Gets Viruses: Finding Means C. Elegans May Aid Studies of Human Infections
ScienceDaily (Jan. 25, 2011) — A workhorse of modern biology is sick, and scientists couldn’t be happier.
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01.20.11
Posted in biology at 12:04 pm by nemo
Scientists View Genome as It Turns on and Off Inside CellsScienceDaily (Jan. 19, 2011) — UCSF researchers have developed a new approach to decoding the vast information embedded in an organism’s genome, while shedding light on exactly how cells interpret their genetic material to create RNA messages and launch new processes in the cell.
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01.18.11
Posted in biology at 11:50 am by nemo
Scientists Sequence Gut Microbes of Premature InfantScienceDaily (Jan. 13, 2011) — Scientists have for the first time sequenced and reconstructed the genomes of most of the microbes in the gut of a premature newborn and documented how the microbe populations changed over time.
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01.14.11
Posted in biology at 1:10 pm by nemo
Fruit Fly Nervous System Provides New Solution to Fundamental Computer Network Problem
ScienceDaily (Jan. 13, 2011) — The fruit fly has evolved a method for arranging the tiny, hair-like structures it uses to feel and hear the world that’s so efficient a team of scientists in Israel and at Carnegie Mellon University says it could be used to more effectively deploy wireless sensor networks and other distributed computing applications.
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01.09.11
Posted in biology at 12:58 pm by nemo
Proteins Need Chaperones: Newly Discovered Processes in Production of Proteins Described
ScienceDaily (Jan. 7, 2011) — Young unmarried girls used to be accompanied by chaperones at social events. Their task was to prevent their charge from having undesirable romantic rendezvous with young boys. The term “molecular chaperones” is used in cellular biology to refer to a group of proteins which prevent undesirable contact between other proteins. Such contact can be particularly dangerous during protein production, a process carried out by the ribosome in the cell.
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01.07.11
Posted in biology at 12:40 pm by nemo
Border Collie Comprehends Over 1,000 Object Names as Verbal ReferentsScienceDaily (Jan. 6, 2011) — Researchers at Wofford College discovered that a border collie comprehends the names of over 1,000 objects, differentiating between names of objects and orders to fetch them. This research deepens the findings of researchers in Germany, who had discovered a dog that knew the names of a couple of hundred objects. Important questions were left open as to how far a dog could go, and whether the dog really understood that the object names were nouns and not commands to retrieve the object.
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01.03.11
Posted in biology at 1:34 pm by nemo
Even Molds Can Suffer Jet Lag: Simple Organisms Shed Light on Inner Clock
ScienceDaily (Jan. 3, 2011) — Humans are not the only species ruled by a circadian rhythm. Even simple organisms like molds are governed by an inner clock.
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12.27.10
Posted in biology at 12:20 pm by nemo
Human Immune System Has Emergency Backup PlanScienceDaily (Dec. 27, 2010) — New research by scientists at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences reveals that the immune system has an effective backup plan to protect the body from infection when the “master regulator” of the body’s innate immune system fails. The study appears in the December 19 online issue of the journal Nature Immunology.
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12.16.10
Posted in biology at 12:44 pm by nemo
Similarities in the Embryonic Development of Various Animal Species Are Also Found at Molecular Level
ScienceDaily (Dec. 15, 2010) — The astonishing similarity in the appearance of embryos from different animal species was observed as far back as the 19th century by scientists such as Karl von Baer, Charles Darwin and Ernst Haeckel. Such observations prompted the hypothesis that the individual development of an organism reflects its evolutionary history or phylogeny. Two groups of scientists, including researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Genetics in Dresden and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Plön, have now succeeded in demonstrating, for the first time, that parallels exist between individual
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12.15.10
Posted in biology, technology at 11:33 am by nemo
Biological Computers: Genetically Modified Cells Communicate Like Electronic Circuits
ScienceDaily (Dec. 14, 2010) — Genetically modified cells can be made to communicate with each other as if they were electronic circuits. Using yeast cells, a group of researchers at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, has taken a groundbreaking step towards being able to build complex systems in the future where the body’s own cells help to keep us healthy.
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12.06.10
Posted in biology at 1:48 pm by nemo
‘Clueless’ Housekeeping Genes Are Activated Randomly, Study Finds
ScienceDaily (Dec. 6, 2010) — Scientists at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have made an unexpected finding about the method by which certain genes are activated. Contrary to what researchers have traditionally assumed, genes that work with other genes to build protein structures do not act in a coordinated way but instead are turned on randomly. The surprising discovery, described in the December 5 online edition of Nature Structural and Molecular Biology, may fundamentally change the way scientists think about the way cellular processes are synchronized.
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Posted in biology at 1:44 pm by nemo
Biologist Tracks Spiders’ Eyes to Learn How Tiny Brains Process InformationScienceDaily (Dec. 5, 2010) — Over the next year, spiders watching videos of their prey are going to help biologist Elizabeth Jakob at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and her colleagues understand how animals choose which visual elements to attend to in their environments. She believes we are on the verge of gaining important new knowledge about how brains and specialized sensory systems work together to process visual information.
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12.04.10
Posted in biology at 1:12 pm by nemo
Do Our Bodies’ Bacteria Play Matchmaker?
ScienceDaily (Dec. 3, 2010) — Could the bacteria that we carry in our bodies decide who we marry? According to a new study from Tel Aviv University, the answer lies in the gut of a small fruit fly.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/12/101202124211.htm
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12.03.10
Posted in biology at 1:42 pm by nemo
Genetic Switch for Determining Gender Identified; Gene Linked to So-Called ‘Intersex’ Families
ScienceDaily (Dec. 2, 2010) — The Y chromosome is supposed to genetically seal a fetus’s fate in terms of gender. Males have one X and one Y chromosome, while females have two X chromosomes. Yet, in some families a child is born with an X and Y chromosome and develops physically as a female, although she may not menstruate, and her brothers and male cousins may have underdeveloped or ambiguous genitalia.
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11.30.10
Posted in biology at 1:29 pm by nemo
2020 — The gene
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11.22.10
Posted in biology at 1:47 pm by nemo
New Microscope Reveals Ultrastructure of CellsScienceDaily (Nov. 22, 2010) — For the first time, there is no need to chemically fix, stain or cut cells in order to study them. Instead, whole living cells are fast-frozen and studied in their natural environment. The new method delivers an immediate 3-D image, thereby closing a gap between conventional microscopic techniques.
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Posted in biology at 1:41 pm by nemo
Researchers Train Bacteria to Convert Bio-Wastes Into Plastic
ScienceDaily (Nov. 21, 2010) — Researcher Jean-Paul Meijnen has ‘trained’ bacteria to convert all the main sugars in vegetable, fruit and garden waste efficiently into high-quality environmentally friendly products such as bioplastics.
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11.19.10
Posted in biology at 2:21 pm by nemo
Mechanism Behind Organ Transplant Rejection Identified
ScienceDaily (Nov. 19, 2010) — UCLA researchers have pinpointed the culprit behind chronic rejection of heart, lung and kidney transplants. Published in the Nov. 23 edition of Science Signaling, their findings suggest new therapeutic approaches for preventing transplant rejection and sabotaging cancer growth.
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Posted in biology at 1:17 pm by nemo
Mortal Chemical Combat Typifies the World of Bacteria
ScienceDaily (Nov. 18, 2010) — Like all organisms, bacteria must compete for resources to survive, even if it means a fight to the death.
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11.10.10
Posted in biology at 1:24 pm by nemo
Alpha Males Take Greater Risks: Study Links Finger Length to Behavior
ScienceDaily (Nov. 9, 2010) — Potential investors might wish to examine the fingers of their financial advisor prior to signing over any savings. A new study from Concordia University has found the length between the second and fourth finger is an indicator of high levels of prenatal testosterone, risk-taking and potential financial success in men.
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Posted in biology at 1:22 pm by nemo
Engineered Plants Make Potential Precursor to Raw Material for Plastics
ScienceDaily (Nov. 8, 2010) — In theory, plants could be the ultimate “green” factories, engineered to pump out the kinds of raw materials we now obtain from petroleum-based chemicals. But in reality, getting plants to accumulate high levels of desired products has been an elusive goal. Now, in a first step toward achieving industrial-scale green production, scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory and collaborators at Dow AgroSciences report engineering a plant that produces industrially relevant levels of compounds that could potentially be used to make plastics.
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