Our genes are encoded in the DNA sequence of the genome, which is highly similar across the diverse cell types of our body. Yet, each cell can only access those genes that are in an epigenetically permissive state. The epigenome ...
Evolution
Jan 18, 2023
2
84
For decades, a small group of cutting-edge medical researchers have been studying a biochemical, DNA tagging system, which switches genes on or off. Many have studied it in bacteria and now some have seen signs of it in, ...
Molecular & Computational biology
Feb 3, 2022
0
159
The chemical steps in an important cellular modification process that adds a chemical tag to some RNAs have been revealed in a new study. Interfering with this process in humans can lead to neuronal diseases, diabetes, and ...
Molecular & Computational biology
Sep 15, 2021
0
341
Images of a protein involved in creating a potent antibiotic reveal the unusual first steps of the antibiotic's synthesis. The improved understanding of the chemistry behind this process, detailed in a new study led by Penn ...
Materials Science
Jan 18, 2021
0
225
Cells will ramp up gene expression in response to physical forces alone, a new study finds. Gene activation, the first step of protein production, starts less than one millisecond after a cell is stretched—hundreds of times ...
Molecular & Computational biology
Apr 1, 2020
0
1462
In research that casts cells as curators of their own history, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute scientists have discovered that adult tissues retain a memory, inscribed on their DNA, of the embryonic cells from which they arose. ...
Cell & Microbiology
Mar 21, 2019
0
1340
Like the poet, microbes that make methane are taking chemists on a road less traveled: Of two competing ideas for how microbes make the main component of natural gas, the winning chemical reaction involves a molecule less ...
Materials Science
May 20, 2016
0
945
Two insect species from Latin America, the dinosaur ant and the red paper wasp, have been used to uncover the molecular mechanisms underpinning queen and worker roles in social insects. The research by an international team ...
Biotechnology
Oct 19, 2015
11
561
For the first time, astronomers have detected the presence of complex organic molecules, the building blocks of life, in a protoplanetary disk surrounding a young star, suggesting once again that the conditions that spawned ...
Astronomy
Apr 8, 2015
78
6182
Scientists at the University of Cambridge working with the Weizmann Institute have created primordial germ cells - cells that will go on to become egg and sperm - using human embryonic stem cells. Although this had already ...
Cell & Microbiology
Dec 24, 2014
1
0
