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Scientists at the University of Illinois at Chicago have developed a way to identify the beginning of every gene—known as a translation start site or a start codon—in bacterial cell DNA with a single experiment and, through ...
What makes one person different from one another, and how did these differences evolve?
Topsoil and nutrient runoff are two serious challenges of sustainable agriculture. Perennial crops can help solve these problems by preserving cropland productivity without requiring substantial dietary and manufacture shifts. ...
DNA, which contains the genetic information of an organism, consists of long chains of nucleotides. In order to study the functions based on the sequence of these building blocks, DNA molecules must be inserted in carrier ...
Australian researchers have used current hepatitis B virus (HBV) genome sequences to deduce ancient human population movements into Australia, adding weight to the theory that the mainland Aboriginal population separated ...
A tree's growth is dependent on nutrients from the soil and water, as well as the microbes in, on, and around the roots. Similarly, a human's health is shaped both by environmental factors and the body's interactions with ...
Exposure to potentially harmful chemicals is a reality of life. Our ancestors, faced with naturally occurring toxins, evolved mechanisms to detoxify and expel damaging substances. In the modern world, our bodies regularly ...
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital investigators have developed software to shrink the error rate in next-generation sequencing data by as much as 100-fold, which would likely speed early detection of relapse and other ...
A James Cook University scientist is part of an international team that's used new 'big data' analysis to achieve a major advance in understanding neurological disorders such as Epilepsy, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease.
The largest ever catalog of bacterial and archaeal microbes commonly populating the human body across worldwide populations has been assembled. This is the main result of a new study coordinated by Nicola Segata and Edoardo ...
Since most of the microbes in our gut are bacteria, they tend to hog much of the microbiome research limelight. But lurking amongst the bacteria are other microbes such as single-cell eukaryotes (SCE) and viruses, which have ...
It could be the plot of an espionage-filled, war-time thriller, or the blow-by-blow of sparring judo masters. But instead it's a true story of molecular warfare between microbes, beginning when a virus latches into a bacterium ...
The TMEM16 family of membrane proteins was hailed as representing the elusive calcium-activated chloride channels. However, the majority of the family members turned out to be scramblases, proteins that shuffle lipids between ...
With a price tag of up to €30,000 per kilogram, saffron is the most expensive spice in the world. Sometimes it even exceeds the price of gold. Its typical aroma is produced by the apocarotenoid Safranal. Saffron is harvested ...
A research team led by Nuno Barbosa Morais, group leader at Instituto de Medicina Molecular João Lobo Antunes (iMM) in Lisbon, computationally analysed the expression of marker genes that are associated with a "fingerprint" ...
One of the most important questions in biology is how rapidly new proteins evolve in organisms. Proteins are the building blocks that carry out the basic functions of life. As the genes that produce them change, the proteins ...
To successfully infect their hosts, bacteria need to evade the host immune system in order to reproduce and spread. Over the course of evolution, hosts—such as humans—develop increasingly sophisticated defenses against ...
Scientists from I.M. Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University together with their Russian colleagues studied the reaction of wheat plants to damage caused by pathogenic fungi. They examined the activation of enzymes ...
One virus' genetic loss can become its evolutionary gain, says a pioneering study from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
The CRISPR/Cas9 system has been causing ripples in the scientific community ever since its mechanisms were reported in 2012. Commonly referred to as a genome editing tool, many scientists have found different applications ...
During brain development, billions of neuron nerve cells must find their accurate pathway in the brain in order to form trillions of neuronal circuits enabling cognitive, sensory and emotional wellbeing. To achieve this remarkable ...
How do nerve cells compute? This fundamental question drives LMU neurobiologists led by Andreas Herz. They have now presented a novel method to disentangle complex neural processes in a much more powerful way than was previously ...
DNA is small. Really, really, small. So, when researchers want to study the structure of a single-stranded DNA, they can't just pull out their microscopes: they have to get creative.
Viruses depend on host cells for replication, but how does a virus induce its host to transcribe its own genetic information alongside that of the virus, thus producing daughter viruses? For decades, researchers have been ...
The union of an ovule and a spermatozoon initiates a complex cell division process that will ultimately yield a new living being. In fact, all the body's cells come from embryonic stem cells that must divide in a controlled ...
By applying gene analysis to individual cells from early mouse embryos, researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have discovered previously unknown cellular stages of fetal development from fertilised egg to living ...
Methane is a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Billions of years ago, methane-producing archaea likely played a key role in determining the composition of the Earth's atmosphere and regulating the global ...
Researchers at the Center for Genome Engineering, within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS, South Korea) have identified the mistake rate of DNA editing tools known as adenine base editors, which are based on CRISPR. Assessing ...
Complex sugars play multiple and essential roles in the living world as structural elements (cellulose), reserve substances (starch), and molecular signals (such as those of blood types), among others. This variety of functions ...
Scientists have revealed how certain wild plants with naturally doubled 'supergenomes' can stay ahead of the game when it comes to adapting to climate volatility and hostile environments.
Just like the wrong ingredients can spoil a cake, so too can the wrong ingredients spoil the results in biomedical research. The difference is that the latter involves years of work, financial and personal investment and ...
Methane is not only a powerful greenhouse gas, but also a source of energy. Microorganisms therefore use it for their metabolism. They do so much more frequently and in more ways than was previously assumed, as revealed by ...
Like any assembly line, the body's protein-building process generates a mechanical force as it produces these important cellular building blocks. Now, a team of researchers suggest they are one step closer to understanding ...
How cells in developing embryos communicate depends a great deal on context, according to scientists at Rice University.
Almost all land plants employ an army of cellular editors who correct errors in their genetic information. Researchers at the University of Bonn have now transferred parts of this machinery into a bacterium. Their results ...
As David Cortez, Ph.D., tells the story of his research team's latest discovery, he shakes his head in disbelief.
Legumes such as peas and beans form intimate and mutually beneficial partnerships (symbioses) with nitrogen-fixing bacteria, rhizobia. The plant benefits from an enhanced supply of nitrogen, 'fixed' from the air by the rhizobia, ...
Researchers from the University of Copenhagen have identified a specific mechanism that protects cells from natural DNA errors that could permanently damage the genetic code and lead to diseases such as cancer. The study ...
Chinese scientists have found that cytosine base editors (BE3 and HF1-BE3) induce genome wide off-target mutations.
The tips of chromosomes have structures called telomeres comparable to the plastic cover at the end of shoelaces. They work as a protective cap that prevents genetic material from unfolding and corroding. When telomeres do ...
In research on zebrafish, Örebro researchers have identified a gene that is essential for producing sperm. Results show that fewer and poorer quality sperm are produced when the gene was turned off with the Crispr/Cas9 technique. ...
The headlines are eye-catching: Scientists have sequenced the genome of white sharks. Or the bamboo lemur, or the golden eagle. But why spend so much time and money figuring out the DNA makeup of different species?
A team of biologists has uncovered a mechanism that determines faithful inheritance of short chromosomes during the reproductive process. The discovery, reported in the journal Nature Communications, elucidates a key aspect ...
The center of our galaxy is a frenzy of activity. A behemoth black hole—4 million times as massive as the sun—blasts out energy as it chows down on interstellar detritus while neighboring stars burst to life and subsequently ...
Researchers at Northeast Normal University, in China, and University of the Basque Country, in Spain, have recently carried out a study investigating the superconducting transition of electrides. The researchers observed ...
The realization of so-called topological materials—which exhibit exotic, defect-resistant properties and are expected to have applications in electronics, optics, quantum computing, and other fields—has opened up a new ...
Direct observations of the structure and catalytic mechanism of a prototypical kinase enzyme—protein kinase A or PKA—will provide researchers and drug developers with significantly enhanced abilities to understand and ...
Once a traditional satellite is launched into space, its physical hardware and computer software stay mostly immutable for the rest of its existence as it orbits the Earth, even as the technology it serves on the ground continues ...
A team of researchers at North Carolina State University has found that people living in the United States tend to set their thermostats to temperatures that mimic natural environmental conditions in parts of Africa. In their ...
Earth's ultimate survivors can weather extreme heat, cold, radiation and even the vacuum of space. Now the U.S. military hopes these tiny critters called tardigrades can teach us about true toughness.
In the Atlantic Ocean, a giant 'conveyor belt' carries warm waters from the tropics into the North Atlantic, where they cool and sink and then return southwards in the deep ocean. This circulation pattern is an important ...
We all know that turning off lights and buying energy-efficient appliances affects our financial bottom line. Now, according to a new study by University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers, we know that saving energy also saves ...
Chemistry researchers at Oregon State University have patented a method for making anti-leukemia compounds that until now have only been available via an Asian tree that produces them.
Inspired by the flashing colors of the neon tetra fish, researchers have developed a technique for changing the color of a material by manipulating the orientation of nanostructured columns in the material.
Introduction of nonnative lake trout in Yellowstone Lake has affected organisms from the microscopic level in the lake to large animals in the region, according to newly published research.
A new model quantifies how forest change affects local surface temperatures by altering sunlight-reflection and evapotranspiration properties, and predicts that Brazilian deforestation could result in a 1.45°C increase by ...
A new species of Surazomus, which belongs to the class Arachnida and the order Schizomida, has been discovered in the eastern Amazon, according to a study published March 20 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Gustavo ...
People from North Africa are likely the main group that founded the indigenous population on the Canary Islands, arriving by 1000 CE, reports a new study by Rosa Fregel of Stanford University and Universidad de La Laguna, ...
A team of researchers at Université Paris Diderot has found evidence that suggests humans are able to detect via smell which partners are genetically preferable. In their paper published in Proceedings of the Royal Society ...
A study by the University of Liverpool reveals new insights into how cells respond to oxygen deprivation.
A team of researchers from New York University has engineered nanoscale protein micelles capable of both delivering chemotherapeutic drugs and of being tracked by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).
In the blockbuster Terminator movie franchise, an evil robot morphs into different human forms and objects and oozes through narrow openings, thanks to its "liquid-metal" composition. Although current robots don't have these ...
Antarctica is a nearly uninhabited, ice-covered continent ravaged by cold, windy, and dry conditions. Virginia Tech researcher Jeb Barrett was part of an international collaborative team that analyzed biodiversity patterns ...
Two isolated mountain lion populations in southern California's Santa Ana and Santa Monica Mountains are at risk of local extinction, perhaps as soon as within 50 years, according to a study published in the journal Ecological ...
A new model built in part by a University of Alberta geophysicist contradicts a long-held idea about how the southern and central central Rocky Mountains were formed.
Research led by the University of Southampton (UK) suggests that 'rogue' waves are occurring less often, but becoming more extreme.
Researchers from the University of Huddersfield, with colleagues from the University of Cambridge and the University of Minho in Braga, have been using a genetic approach to tackle one of the most intractable questions of ...
In mobiles, fridges, planes – transistors are everywhere. But they often operate only within a restricted current range. LMU physicists have now developed an organic transistor that functions perfectly under both low and ...
Humans are unknowingly adhering to a universal pattern when they flick between apps on their smartphones, scientists have discovered.
Light-by-light scattering is a very rare phenomenon in which two photons interact, producing another pair of photons. This process was among the earliest predictions of quantum electrodynamics (QED), the quantum theory of ...
In a little more than seven minutes in the early afternoon of Feb. 18, 2021, NASA's Mars 2020 rover will execute about 27,000 actions and calculations as it speeds through the hazardous transition from the edge of space to ...
A team of researchers with the Keiki Kohola Project and California State University reports that a recent "blob" of warm water in the Pacific gives marine scientists a preview of the impact of climate change on humpback whales. ...
The Kaikoura earthquake in New Zealand in 2016 caused widespread damage. LMU researchers have now dissected its mechanisms revealing surprising insights on earthquake physics with the aid of simulations carried out on the ...
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