As eggs and sperm, or gametes, are formed during meiosis, chromosomes carrying the genetic material from each parent must find their partners, pair, and exchange parts of their DNA. This recombination is an important driving ...
Biotechnology
Mar 17, 2016
0
18
With its abundance of stem cells known as neoblasts, and remarkable abilities to restore body parts lost to injury, the humble flatworm, or planaria, has become an exciting model organism to study the processes of tissue ...
Cell & Microbiology
Dec 17, 2015
0
18
Researchers in the Workman Lab at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research have identified a link between cellular metabolism and gene expression, one with potentially far-reaching implications for cancer risk prediction ...
Cell & Microbiology
Oct 29, 2015
0
1264
Cellular mitosis depends in part on small organelles that extend spindles to pull apart chromosome pairs. Before they can perform this and other essential tasks, these tiny cylindrical structures—known as centrioles in ...
Cell & Microbiology
Sep 11, 2015
0
842
If DNA is the cookbook of life, then RNA is the scratch paper where the cell writes down its favorite recipes. These recipes could make the pigments of your skin, the vehicles that carry oxygen through your veins, or the ...
Biochemistry
May 27, 2015
0
1759
All the cells in an organism carry the same instruction manual, the DNA, but different cells read and express different portions of it in order fulfill specific functions in the body. For example, nerve cells express genes ...
Biotechnology
Mar 9, 2015
1
26
The development of a new organism from the joining of two single cells is a carefully orchestrated endeavor. But even before sperm meets egg, an equally elaborate set of choreographed steps must occur to ensure successful ...
Biotechnology
Oct 23, 2014
0
0
If you never understood what "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" meant in high school, don't worry: biologists no longer think that an animal's "ontogeny", that is, its embryonic development, replays its entire evolutionary ...
Biotechnology
Sep 14, 2014
7
0
In a cell's nucleus, chromosomal DNA is tightly bound to structural proteins known as histones, an amalgam biologists call chromatin. Until about two decades ago, histones were regarded as a nuclear "sidekick," the mere packing ...
Cell & Microbiology
Aug 29, 2014
0
0
Adult organisms ranging from fruit flies to humans harbor adult stem cells, some of which renew themselves through cell division while others differentiate into the specialized cells needed to replace worn-out or damaged ...
Cell & Microbiology
Aug 6, 2014
0
0
