New findings challenge assumptions about origins of life

Before there was life on Earth, there were molecules. A primordial soup. At some point a few specialized molecules began replicating. This self-replication, scientists agree, kick-started a biochemical process that would ...

A microbe's trick for staying young

Researchers have discovered a microbe that stays forever young by rejuvenating every time it reproduces. The findings, published in Current Biology, provide fundamental insights into the mechanisms of aging.

How chromosome ends influence cellular aging

By studying processes that occur at the ends of chromosomes, a team of Heidelberg researchers has unravelled an important mechanism towards a better understanding of cellular aging. The scientists focused on the length of ...

The 'weakest link' in the aging proteome

Proteins are the chief actors in cells, carrying out the duties specified by information encoded in our genes. Most proteins live only two days or less, ensuring that those damaged by inevitable chemical modifications are ...

Scientists solve a 14,000-year-old ocean mystery

At the end of the last Ice Age, as the world began to warm, a swath of the North Pacific Ocean came to life. During a brief pulse of biological productivity 14,000 years ago, this stretch of the sea teemed with phytoplankton, ...

Worm research may help humans live longer

(Phys.org) —Look what might help us live longer—worms! Researchers at the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research (BTI) and Cornell have shown that roundworms can live up to 20 percent longer when bathed in their ...

Aging cells lose their grip on DNA rogues

(Phys.org)—Transposable elements are mobile strands of DNA that insert themselves into chromosomes with mostly harmful consequences. Cells try to keep them locked down, but in a new study, Brown University researchers ...

Chromosome 'anchors' organize DNA during cell division

For humans to grow and to replace and heal damaged tissues, the body's cells must continually reproduce, a process known as "cell division," by which one cell becomes two, two become four, and so on. A key question of biomedical ...

Using computational biology for the annotation of proteins

Research carried out at Universidad Carlos III of Madrid in collaboration with the Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Oncologicas employed computational techniques to improve the characterization of proteins. The system they ...

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