Screw-shaped bird sperm swim faster—but it comes at a cost

A study by Ph.D. student Hanna Nyborg Støstad has investigated the peculiar spiral shape of songbird sperm. Støstad compared sperm cells of 36 bird species including house sparrows and tree swallows, and found that species ...

Frog eggs help researchers understand repair of DNA damages

The DNA replication process in which cells divide to create new cells also triggers repair of DNA damage, researchers from the University of Copenhagen report in a new study. The researchers studied extracts from frog eggs, ...

Bacteria help discover human cancer-causing proteins

A team led by researchers at Baylor College of Medicine and the University of Texas at Austin has applied an unconventional approach that used bacteria to discover human proteins that can lead to DNA damage and promote cancer. ...

How invading jumping genes are thwarted

Since Carnegie Institution's Barbara McClintock received her Nobel Prize on her discovery of jumping genes in 1983, we have learned that almost half of our DNA is made up of jumping genes—called transposons. Given their ...

Biologists discover source for boosting tumor cell drug sensitivity

DNA-damaging agents, or "DDAs," make up the most widely used group of cancer drugs. Yet their therapeutic success has been curtailed by drug resistance—either present in cancer cells from the disease onset or arising during ...

Cellular trash cans reveal the roles of proteins in disease

If we really want to know how our body's cells work—or don't work, in the case of disease—we might need to look beyond their genes and even beyond the proteins they are made of. We may need to start going through the ...

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