PhD candidate explores their interconnection
Like any 28 year old, Arif Jetha, a fourth-year PhD candidate at the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health, is worrying about his future. Once he completes his PhD, should he remain at home with his parents and pursue post-doctoral work or move on to full-time employment and begin establishing his career? (more…)
New research by a team from the Universities of Glasgow and Exeter shows that a good indicator of how long individuals will live can be obtained from early in life using the length of specialised pieces of DNA called telomeres.
Telomeres occur at the ends of the chromosomes, which contain our genetic code.
They function a bit like the plastic caps at the end of shoelaces by marking the chromosome ends and protecting them from various process that gradually cause the ends to be worn away. This method of DNA protection is the same for most animals and plants, including humans, and the eventual loss of the telomere cap is known to cause cells to malfunction. This study is the first in which telomere length has been measured repeatedly from early in life of an individual and then for the rest of their natural lives. The results show that telomere length in early life is strongly predictive of lifespan. (more…)
For a short time in grade school, Kevin Boyce lived within two blocks of the La Brea tar pits in Los Angeles, a place where ice age mammal fossils had been discovered. Above his bed hung a poster of the Yale Peabody Museum’s famous Age of Reptiles mural. But it wasn’t a boyhood fascination with prehistoric life that influenced his interest in paleontology, but rather the medieval literary world of Chaucer that Boyce discovered in college.
“I didn’t think twice about fossils between the ages of 7 and 20,” said Boyce, associate professor in geophysical sciences. Even during his undergraduate studies in literature and biology at the California Institute of Technology in the early 1990s, the deep history of life on Earth was far from his mind. (more…)
*Joint BioEnergy Institute Researchers Identify Key Enzyme Structure*
The recent discovery that bisabolane, a member of the terpene class of chemical compounds used in fragrances and flavorings, holds high promise as a biosynthetic alternative to D2 diesel fuel has generated keen interest in the green energy community and the trucking industry. Now a second team of researchers with the U.S Department of Energy (DOE)’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) has determined the three-dimensional crystal structure of a protein that is key to boosting the microbial-based production of bisabolane as an advanced biofuel.
The JBEI research team, led by bioengineers Paul Adams and Jay Keasling, solved the protein crystal structure of an enzyme in the Grand fir (Abies grandis) that synthesizes bisabolene, the immediate terpene precursor to bisabolane. The performance of this enzyme – the Abies grandis α-bisabolene synthase (AgBIS) – when engineered into microbes, has resulted in a bottleneck that hampers the conversion by the microbes of simple sugars into bisabolene. (more…)
Industry collaboration critical to helping businesses, governments and citizens realize safer computing experiences.
REDMOND, Wash. – Ten years ago this week, during a time when security problems were threatening trust in software products, Bill Gates sent an email to all Microsoft full-time employees announcing the creation of the Trustworthy Computing (TwC) initiative. A pivotal moment in the company’s history, Gates defined the key aspects of Trustworthy Computing, stating the company must make this initiative the highest priority. (more…)
For the first time, researchers have analyzed the multitude of microorganisms residing in the human gut as a complex, integrated biological system, rather than a set of separate species. Their approach has revealed patterns that correspond with excess body weight. (more…)
*University of Minnesota Research Finds Sex Ratios Influence Financial Decisions*
MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL — The perception that women are scarce leads men to become impulsive, save less, and increase borrowing, according to new research from the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management.
“What we see in other animals is that when females are scarce, males become more competitive. They compete more for access to mates,” says Vladas Griskevicius, an assistant professor of marketing at the Carlson School and lead author of the study. “How do humans compete for access to mates? What you find across cultures is that men often do it through money, through status and through products.” (more…)
*Knowledge could assist in tissue replacements, treatments for high blood pressure and diabetes*
COLUMBIA, Mo. – Human arteries – some smaller than a strand of hair – stiffen as a person ages. This stiffening is a factor in cardiovascular disease, the leading cause of death in the United States, because it contributes to the circulatory complications in disorders such as high blood pressure and diabetes. University of Missouri researchers have now used advanced 3-D microscopic imaging technology to identify and monitor the proteins involved in this stiffening process. These findings could eventually help researchers and physicians understand and treat complications associated with cardiovascular disease. (more…)
