COLUMBUS, Ohio — Though scientists have long believed that complex organic molecules couldn’t survive fossilization, some 350-million-year-old remains of aquatic sea creatures uncovered in Ohio, Indiana, and Iowa have challenged that assumption.
The spindly animals with feathery arms—called crinoids, but better known today by the plant-like name “sea lily”—appear to have been buried alive in storms during the Carboniferous Period, when North America was covered with vast inland seas. Buried quickly and isolated from the water above by layers of fine-grained sediment, their porous skeletons gradually filled with minerals, but some of the pores containing organic molecules were sealed intact. (more…)
AMHERST, Mass. – Studies led by cell biologist Thomas Maresca at the University of Massachusetts Amherst are revealing new details about a molecular surveillance system that helps detect and correct errors in cell division that can lead to cell death or human diseases. Findings are reported in the current issue of the Journal of Cell Biology.
The purpose of cell division is to evenly distribute the genome between two daughter cells. To achieve this, every chromosome must properly interact with a football-shaped structure called the spindle. However, interaction errors between the chromosomes and spindle during division are amazingly common, occurring in 86 to 90 percent of chromosomes, says Maresca, an expert in mitosis. (more…)
Are you allergic to peanuts and worried there might be some in that cookie? Now you can find out using a rather unlikely source: your cell phone.
A team of researchers from the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science has developed a lightweight device called the iTube, which attaches to a common cell phone to detect allergens in food samples. The iTube attachment uses the cell phone’s built-in camera, along with an accompanying smart-phone application that runs a test with the same high level of sensitivity a laboratory would.(more…)
COLUMBIA, Mo. — Approximately 250,000 people in the United States suffer from muscular dystrophy, which occurs when damaged muscle tissue is replaced with fibrous, bony or fatty tissue and loses function. Three years ago, University of Missouri scientists found a molecular compound that is vital to curing the disease, but they didn’t know how to make the compound bind to the muscle cells. In a new study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science, MU School of Medicine scientists Yi Lai and Dongsheng Duan have discovered the missing pieces to this puzzle that could ultimately lead to a therapy and, potentially, a longer lifespan for patients suffering from the disease.
Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), predominantly affecting males, is the most common type of muscular dystrophy. Patients with Duchenne muscular dystrophy have a gene mutation that disrupts the production of dystrophin, a protein essential for muscle cell survival and function. Absence of dystrophin starts a chain reaction that eventually leads to muscle cell degeneration and death. While dystrophin is vital for muscle development, the protein also needs several “helpers” to maintain the muscle tissue. One of these “helper” molecular compounds is nNOS, which produces nitric oxide that can keep muscle cells healthy after exercise. (more…)
Researchers from North Carolina State University and the University of Oregon have found a way to exploit cloud-based Web browsers, using them to perform large-scale computing tasks anonymously. The finding has potential ramifications for the security of “cloud browser” services.
At issue are cloud browsers, which create a Web interface in the cloud so that computing is done there rather than on a user’s machine. This is particularly useful for mobile devices, such as smartphones, which have limited computing power.The cloud-computing paradigm pools the computational power and storage of multiple computers, allowing shared resources for multiple users. (more…)
The most prestigious peer-reviewed journals in the world, such as Cell, Nature, Science, and the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), have less and less influence amongst scientists, according to a paper co-authored by Vincent Larivière, a professor at the University of Montreal’s School of Library and Information Sciences. He questions the relationship between journal “impact factor” and number of citations subsequently received by papers.
“In 1990, 45% of the top 5% most cited articles were published in the top 5% highest impact factor journals. In 2009, this rate was only 36%,” Larivière said. “This means that the most cited articles are published less exclusively in high impact factor journals.” The proportion of these articles published in major scholarly journals has sharply declined over the last twenty years. His study was based on a sample of more than 820 million citations and 25 million articles published between 1902 and 2009. The findings were published in the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. (more…)
Sequencing the barley genome will sow many benefits
Some 10,000 years ago, people found they didn’t have to live as nomads, hunting and gathering all their food. In the Fertile Crescent, they started planting crops.
The Fertile Crescent extended from the Nile Valley and along the eastern Mediterranean Coast, through the Tigris and Euphrates valleys of Mesopotamia and down to the Persian Gulf. There, the foundation crops of the Western World were first domesticated.(more…)
Berkeley Lab Researchers Develop New Tool for Making Genetic Engineering of Microbial Circuits Reliably Predictable
Synthetic biology is the latest and most advanced phase of genetic engineering, holding great promise for helping to solve some of the world’s most intractable problems, including the sustainable production of energy fuels and critical medical drugs, and the safe removal of toxic and radioactive waste from the environment. However, for synthetic biology to reach its promise, the design and construction of biological systems must be as predictable as the assembly of computer hardware.
An important step towards attaining a higher degree of predictability in synthetic biology has been taken by a group of researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) under the leadership of computational biologist Adam Arkin. Arkin and his team have developed an “adaptor” that makes the genetic engineering of microbial components substantially easier and more predictable by converting regulators of translation into regulators of transcription in Escherichia coli. Transcription and translation make up the two-step process by which the coded instructions of genes are used to synthesize proteins. (more…)
