Herbivores Dine on Toxic Plants, Thanks to Gut Microbes
Woodrats lost their ability to eat toxic creosote bushes after antibiotics killed their gut microbes. Woodrats that never ate the plants were able to do so after receiving fecal transplants with microbes from creosote-eaters, University of Utah biologists found. (more…)
Electrical Images Show Upward Flow of Fluids to Magma Chamber
By measuring how fast Earth conducts electricity and seismic waves, a University of Utah researcher and colleagues made a detailed picture of Mount Rainier’s deep volcanic plumbing and partly molten rock that will erupt again someday.
“This is the most direct image yet capturing the melting process that feeds magma into a crustal reservoir that eventually is tapped for eruptions,” says geophysicist Phil Wannamaker, of the university’s Energy & Geoscience Institute and Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. “But it does not provide any information on the timing of future eruptions from Mount Rainier or other Cascade Range volcanoes.” (more…)
University of Utah researchers find that multiple silent mutations greatly impact protein translation
So-called silent DNA mutations earned their title because, according to the fundamental rules of biology, they should be inconsequential. Reported on June 5 in PLOS Genetics online, University of Utah researchers experimentally proved there are frequent exceptions to the rule. The work was conducted in the bacteria, Salmonella enterica, used to study basic biological mechanisms that are often conserved in humans. (more…)
Study Shows Last-Minute Role of Protein Named ALIX
University of Utah researchers devised a way to watch newly forming AIDS virus particles emerging or “budding” from infected human cells without interfering with the process. The method shows a protein named ALIX gets involved during the final stages of virus replication, not earlier, as was believed previously. (more…)
Speeding at 1 Million mph, It Probes Black Hole and Dark Matter
A University of Utah-led team discovered a “hypervelocity star” that is the closest, second-brightest and among the largest of 20 found so far. Speeding at more than 1 million mph, the star may provide clues about the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way and the halo of mysterious “dark matter” surrounding the galaxy, astronomers say. (more…)
Save Threatened Species by Giving Them Treated Cotton for Nests
When University of Utah biologists set out cotton balls treated with a mild pesticide, wild finches in the Galapagos Islands used the cotton to help build their nests, killing parasitic fly maggots to protect baby birds. The researchers say the self-fumigation method may help endangered birds and even some mammals.
“We are trying to help birds help themselves,” says biology professor Dale Clayton, senior author of a study outlining the new technique. The findings were published online May 5, 2014, in the journal Current Biology. (more…)
Early Step toward Treatment for Diseases that Affect Blood Flow
University of Utah bioengineers showed that tiny blood vessels grow better in the laboratory if the tissue surrounding them is less dense. Then the researchers created a computer simulation to predict such growth accurately – an early step toward treatments to provide blood supply to tissues damaged by diabetes and heart attacks and to skin grafts and implanted ligaments and tendons.
“Better understanding of the processes that regulate the growth of blood vessels puts us in a position ultimately to develop new treatments for diseases related to blood vessel growth,” and to better understand cancer metastasis, says bioengineering professor Jeff Weiss of the university’s Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute. (more…)
Record-Breaking Slide Would Bury Central Park 66 Feet Deep
Last year’s gigantic landslide at a Utah copper mine probably was the biggest nonvolcanic slide in North America’s modern history, and included two rock avalanches that happened 90 minutes apart and surprisingly triggered 16 small earthquakes, University of Utah scientists discovered.
The landslide – which moved at an average of almost 70 mph and reached estimated speeds of at least 100 mph – left a deposit so large it “would cover New York’s Central Park with about 20 meters (66 feet) of debris,” the researchers report in the January 2014 cover study in the Geological Society of America magazine GSA Today. (more…)
