04 Jul
Agriculture and frog sexual abnormalities
A farm irrigation canal would seem a healthier place for toads than a ditch by a supermarket parking lot. But University of Florida researchers have found the opposite is true. In a study with wide implications for a longstanding debate over whether agricultural chemicals pose a threat to amphibians, UF zoologists have observed that toads in suburban areas are less likely to suffer from reproductive system abnormalities than toads near farms where some had both testes and ovaries……..
What do humans and single-celled choanoflagellates have in common? More than you’d think. New research into the choanoflagellate genome shows these ancient organisms have similar levels of proteins that cells in more complex organisms, including humans, use to communicate with each other. As per a paper published last week in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science, these findings help confirm choanoflagellates’ role as an evolutionary link between single-celled and multi-celled organisms. They also contend that these insights into the organism’s genome may mean that the proteins used to help cells communicate may have other roles as well. The scientists are from the University of California, San Francisco and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Gera number of……..
As anyone who has suffered from jetlag knows, we have internal clocks that tell us when to sleep and wake, and we can be miserable when these are disrupted. The daily cycles of a number of organisms are well known, but what has not been clear is whether these cycles are just responses to external cues of light, dark, heat, and cold, or if there are internal clocks that are set and reset by environmental signals. In animals, circadian rhythms are known to be important for maintaining a multitude of physiological processes. They may be even more critical for plants, which grow in a number of different light and temperature environments that not only vary with latitude but also with subtle differences within just a few feet. Plants respond to changes in light and temperature, opening flowers at dawn and closing them at night or blooming in the right season. However, they also have endogenous circadian (”around the day”) rhythms with roughly 24 hour periods that are regulated by numerous genes that interact in complex pathways and cycles like exquisite 18th century clocks. These clock genes have been intensely investigated over the last 20 years, but we still do not fully understand the molecular mechanisms that make them run. Knowledge of these oscillations and the genes that regulate them could help us adjust the growth, development, and yield of crops under climatically variable conditions……..
Previous to the federal Clean Air Act, unhindered industrial emissions were released into the air throughout the Midwestern and Eastern United States for decades. A number of of those harmful chemicals came right back down to earth in the form of acid rain, a chemical concoction that includes nitric and sulfuric acid……..
More than 15 years ago researchers discovered a way to stop a particular gene in its tracks. The Nobel Prize-winning finding holds tantalizing promise for medical science, but so far it has been difficult to apply the technique, known as RNA interference, in living cells. Now researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle and Emory University in Atlanta have succeeded in using nanotechnology known as quantum dots to address this problem. Their technique is 10 to 20 times more effective than existing methods for injecting the gene-silencing tools, known as siRNA, into cells……..
Microbes may be smarter than we think. A new study by Princeton University scientists shows for the first time that bacteria don’t just react to changes in their surroundings — they anticipate and prepare for them. The findings, published in the June 6 issue of Science, challenge the prevailing notion that only organisms with complex nervous systems have this ability……..
Barcelona, Spain: What are the genes implicated in upright walking of humans? The discovery of four families in which some members only walk on all fours (quadrupedality) may help us understand how humans, unlike other primates, are able to walk for long periods on only two legs, a scientist will tell the annual conference of the European Society of Human Genetics tomorrow (Monday 2 June)……..
Brain cells known as neurons process information by joining into complex networks, transmitting signals to each other across junctions called synapses. But “neurons don’t just connect to other neurons,” emphasizes Z. Josh Huang, Ph.D., “in a lot of cases, they connect to very specific partners, at particular spots.”…….
Census of Marine Life-affiliated scientists, plumbing the secrets of a vast underwater mountain range south of New Zealand, captured the first images of a novel Brittlestar City established against daunting odds on the peak of a seamount an underwater summit taller than the worlds tallest building……..
A team of Penn State scientists has developed a simple artificial cell with which to investigate the organization and function of two of the most basic cell components: the cell membrane and the cytoplasm–the gelatinous fluid that surrounds the structures in living cells. The work could lead to the creation of new drugs that take advantage of properties of cell organization to prevent the development of diseases. The team’s findings will be published later this month in the Journal of the American Chemical Society……..
