- Living sensor can warn of arsenic pollution
Scientists studying arsenic pollution have discovered a living sensor that can spot contamination. They have also discovered new bacteria that can clean up arsenic spills even in previously untreatable cold areas, microbiologists...
(Issue date: 09 September 2008)
- Promising targets for drug development
Mammalian fatty acid synthase is one of the most complex molecular synthetic machines in human cells. It is also a promising target for the development of anti-cancer and anti-obesity drugs and the treatment of metabolic...
(Issue date: 09 September 2008)
- Bitter-tasting nectar and floral odours optimise outcrossing in plants
Animals "personally" bring their gametes together - seeking out sexual partners, mating, fertilising, and reproducing. Plants, however, are sessile organisms and require the help of a third party, the pollinator, which can be a...
(Issue date: 01 September 2008)
- OHSU Grows Hair Cells Involved in Hearing
Successful production of functional sensory hair cells in the inner ears of mice suggests that a new therapy to regain hearing may be possible. Oregon Health & Science University scientists have successfully produced functional...
(Issue date: 01 September 2008)
- Researches devise means to create blood by identifying earliest stem cells.
Johns Hopkins researchers have discovered the earliest form of human blood stem cells and deciphered the mechanism by which these embryonic stem cells replicate and grow. They also found a surprising biological marker that...
(Issue date: 01 September 2008)
- Blood vessel cells are instructed to form tube-like structures
How do blood vessel cells understand that they should organise themselves in tubes and not in layers? A research group from Uppsala University shows for the first time that a special type of "instructor" molecule is needed to...
(Issue date: 01 September 2008)
- New light-sensitive pathway in the eye offers drug target to control sleep
A set of nerve cells in the eye control our levels of sleepiness according to the brightness of our surroundings, Oxford University researchers have discovered. The cells directly regulate the activity of sleep centres in the...
(Issue date: 01 September 2008)
- Robot with a Biological Brain: new research provides insights into how the brain works
A multidisciplinary team at the University of Reading has developed a robot which is controlled by a biological brain formed from cultured neurons. This research is the first step to examine how memories manifest themselves in...
(Issue date: 26 August 2008)
- New Insight Into What Freezes Parkinson’s Patients and Drives Drug Addicts
Parkinson's disease and drug addiction are polar opposite diseases, but both depend upon dopamine in the brain. Parkinson's patients don't have enough of it; drug addicts get too much of it. Although the importance of dopamine in...
(Issue date: 26 August 2008)
- 1918 Flu Antibodies Resurrected From Elderly Survivors
Ninety years after the sweeping destruction of the 1918 flu pandemic, researchers at Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt have recovered antibodies to the virus – from elderly survivors of the original outbreak. In...
(Issue date: 26 August 2008)
- Caltech Engineers Build Mini Drug-Producing Biofactories in Yeast
Researchers at the California Institute of Technology have developed a novel way to churn out large quantities of drugs, including antiplaque toothpaste additives, antibiotics, nicotine, and even morphine, using mini...
(Issue date: 26 August 2008)
- A snooze button for the circadian clock
We may use the snooze button to fine-tune our sleep cycles, but our cells have a far more meticulous and refined system. Humans, and most other organisms, have 24-hour rhythms that are regulated by a precise molecular clock that...
(Issue date: 26 August 2008)
- Study reveals surprising details of the evolution of protein translation
A new study of transfer RNA, a molecule that delivers amino acids to the protein-building machinery of the cell, challenges long-held ideas about the evolutionary history of protein synthesis. In the study, researchers report...
(Issue date: 26 August 2008)
- Genentech considers Roche offer too low
The special committee set up by Genentech to evaluate the offer from Roche to buy for $89.00 a share the shares in Genentech that Roche does not already own has unanimously concluded that Roche's...
(Issue date: 20 August 2008)
- Structural basis for enzyme involved in many inflammatory diseases determined
Researchers from Karolinska Institutet and KTH has in co-operation with researchers from Japan determined the structure of the enzyme Microsomalprostaglandin E synthase 1 (MPGES1). MPGES1 has been implicated in a number of human...
(Issue date: 11 August 2008)
- Scientists Manipulate Group Behaviour in Bacteria
Bacteria band together to plan their battles against the body. They organise the assaults using a series of cell-to-cell communication signals that determine when to launch an attack against the host. Now Howard Hughes Medical...
(Issue date: 11 August 2008)
- Multi-tasking molecule holds key to allergic reactions
As the summer approaches most of us rejoice, reach for the sunscreen and head outdoors. But an ever-growing number of people reach for tissue instead as pollen leaves eyes watering, noses running and spirits dwindling. Hay fever...
(Issue date: 11 August 2008)
- First step towards switching off breast cancer and leukaemia
Australian scientists have identified a way to ‘switch off’ a molecule, a key player in the molecular processes that trigger breast cancer and certain forms of leukaemia. The molecule, known as Gab2, operates downstream of a...
(Issue date: 11 August 2008)
- A Gene for Sexual Switching in Melons Provides Clues to the Evolution of Sex
A newly discovered function for a hormone in melons suggests it plays a role in how sexual systems evolve in plants. The study was conducted by French and American scientists. Scientists from several French institutions, led by...
(Issue date: 11 August 2008)
- Caltech Neurobiologists Discover Individuals Who "Hear" Movement
Individuals with synesthesia perceive the world in a different way from the rest of us. Because their senses are cross-activated, some synesthetes perceive numbers or letters as having colours or days of the week as possessing...
(Issue date: 11 August 2008)
