Biosentients - Science Biology… etc

Experiments show that simple molecules can combine chemically rather than biologically to form the building blocks of DNA, the key component of all life forms. These processes might have taken place on primitive earth, but how they occur is an unsolved puzzle. Chemists at the University of Georgia have now proposed the first detailed, feasible mechanism to explain how adenine, one of the four building blocks of DNA, might be built up from the combination of five cyanide molecules. The investigation is based on extensive quantum chemical computations over several years……..

Scientists at MIT studying the architecture of proteins have finally explained why computer models of proteins’ behavior under mechanical duress differ dramatically from experimental observations. This work could have vast implications in bioengineering and medical research by advancing our understanding of the relationship between structure and function in these basic building blocks of life……..

Fluorescent proteins found in nature have been employed in a variety of scientific research purposes, from markers for tracing molecules in biomedicine to probes for testing environmental quality. Until now, such proteins have been identified mostly in jellyfish and corals, leading to the belief that the capacity for fluorescence in animals is exclusive to such primitive creatures……..

A novel MIT study concludes that increasing levels of ozone due to the growing use of fossil fuels will damage global vegetation, resulting in serious costs to the world’s economy. The analysis, published in the recent issue of Energy Policy, focused on how three environmental changes (increases in temperature, carbon dioxide and ozone) linked to human activity will affect crops, pastures and forests……..

The common practice of adding nitrogen fertilizer is believed to benefit the soil by building organic carbon, but four University of Illinois soil researchers dispute this view based on analyses of soil samples from the Morrow Plots that date back to before the current practice began. The research, also drawing upon data from other long-term trials throughout the world, was conducted by U of I soil researchers Saeed Khan, Richard Mulvaney, Tim Ellsworth, and Charlie Boast. Their paper “The Myth of Nitrogen Fertilization for Soil Carbon Sequestration” is reported in the November/December 2007 issue of the Journal of Environmental Quality……..

A discovery about the genetics of coat color in dogs could help explain why humans come in different weights and vary in our abilities to cope with stress, a team led by scientists from the Stanford University School of Medicine reports. The study, reported in the Nov. 2 issue of Science, answers a longtime mystery: What determines coat color in dogs” While scientists have known since the 1900s that most mammals share the same genetic mechanism to determine coat color, by the 1950s they began to suspect that dogs were different……..

Frogs are vanishing from all the world’s ecosystems with unprecedented speed. It is thought that more than 100 species have died out since 1980 alone. In a paper reported in the online, open-access journal PLoS ONE, a team of experts, including scientists from the University of Canterbury, says the number of species has been strongly underestimated and they are calling for action……..

ematode worms treated with lithium show a 46 percent increase in lifespan, raising the tantalizing question of whether humans taking the mood affecting drug are also taking an anti-aging medication. Results of the Buck Institute study, led by faculty member Gordon J. Lithgow, PhD, are currently published online in the Journal of Biological Chemistry……..

he Stowers Institutes Pourqui Lab has demonstrated the role of fibroblast growth factor (FGF) in the embryonic process of somitogenesis, an event mandatory for vertebrae formation, in a paper posted to the Web site of the journal Development. The paper will appear in the November print issue of the journal……..

Inventories of living and dead organisms could serve as a relatively fast, simple and inexpensive preliminary means of assessing human impact on ecosystems. The University of Chicago’s Susan Kidwell explains how measuring the degree of live-dead mismatch could be used as an ecological tool in the Oct. 26 early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences……..