Soil bacterium tapped for penicillin guard duty

A common soil bacterium may hold the key to preserving the germ-killing power of penicillin. U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists in Peoria, Illinois, helped mass produce the antibiotic during World War II to ...

How male germ cells avoid genome instability

A group of researchers at Osaka University reported the function of GTSF1 in male germ cells. The study, which can be read in EMBO Reports, shows that GTSF1 is an essential factor for secondary piRNA biogenesis by regulating ...

Fanconi anemia: Insight from a green plant

Fanconi anemia is a human genetic disorder with severe effects, including an increased risk of cancer and infertility. Work in animal systems has identified many factors involved in Fanconi anemia and showed that these factors ...

BigH1—the key histone for male fertility

Researchers in the Chromatin Structure and Function Lab at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona) have identified the histone BigH1 as a key protein in stem cell differentiation to male sex cells. Histones ...

Video: How hand sanitizers work

Alcohol-based hand sanitizers are the ubiquitous little squeeze-bottle heroes of airports and hospitals, our allies during cold and flu season, and supposedly effective against a huge variety of disease-causing viruses and ...

Preventing a genetic uprising in early life

Molecules called endosiRNAs help us avoid genetic chaos, according to a new study from a team at the Babraham Institute. Much of the human genome contains pieces of DNA called transposons, a form of genetic parasite. When ...

Advance achieved in dry preservation of mammalian sperm cells

In a paper forthcoming in the November issue of the journal Theriogenology, a team of researchers from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, announced the first ...

The evolutionary origin of the gut

How did the gut, the skin and musculature evolve? This question concerns scientists for more than a century. Through the investigation of the embryonic development of sea anemones, a very old animal lineage, researchers from ...

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