17/01/2013

How cells know when it's time to eat themselves

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have identified a molecular mechanism regulating autophagy, a fundamental stress response used by cells to help ensure their survival in adverse conditions.

A nano-gear in a nano-motor inside you

Diverse cellular processes require many tiny force-generating motor proteins to work in a team. Paradoxically, nature often chooses the weak and inefficient dynein motor to generate large persistent forces inside cells. Here ...

Quail really know their camouflage

When it comes to camouflage, ground-nesting Japanese quail are experts. That's based on new evidence published online on January 17 in Current Biology that mother quail "know" the patterning of their own eggs and choose laying ...

The neurobiological consequence of predating or grazing

Researchers in the group of Ralf Sommer at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tuebingen, Germany, have for the first time been able to identify neuronal correlates of behaviour by comparing maps of synaptic ...

Learning the alphabet of gene control

Scientists at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have made a large step towards the understanding of how human genes are regulated. In a new study, published in the journal Cell, they identified the DNA sequences that bind to ...

A hidden treasure in the Large Magellanic Cloud

(Phys.org)—Nearly 200 000 light-years from Earth, the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, floats in space, in a long and slow dance around our galaxy. Vast clouds of gas within it slowly collapse ...

Ancient critter could be the granddaddy of shellfish

A weird marine creature that lived 500 million years ago at a time of explosive growth in Earth's biodiversity could be a forerunner of worms and molluscs, a study published on Thursday said.

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