UCSF research reveals how the embryo brings its heart together
...he primordial heart halves to join was named miles apart by a post-doctoral researcher pining for his lover...oss the sea. In the embryos affected by the miles apart mutation, the researchers found, the two primordial heart tubes failed to converge to the midline. ...What makes cells tick detailed by Dartmouth researchers
...read mold Neurospora, Dunlap and Loros have teased apart the genetic cogs that form the basis of most living clocks. Light and dark cycles reset the clocks, they found, the way turning the hands of a clock does, but are not required to run them. The recent announcement that a map of the human genome is...One-two punch knocks out fly genes
...hnique offers fly researchers the ability to tease apart the functions of the 13,601 genes in the fruit fly genome. With important genes, Nature has demonstrated an exquisite sense of economy: 177 of the 289 human genes that when "misspelled" are known to cause diseases in people have direct counterparts...Spiders get better web sites by rising early
...group living. "This study has allowed us to tease apart the mechanisms that structure colonies," he says. Female spiders with egg sacs have special needs, as they attach their egg sacs to lines near the orb web. Once the sacs are in place, the females cannot move them. Thus the females have to stay put...Success of introduced Argentine ants tied to reduced genetic variation
... toward one another, literally tearing one another apart whenever they came into contact. The puzzling question to the researchers was, why weren't the introduced ants in California the same way? Why would an Argentine ant from San Diego dropped into a colony in San Francisco be welcomed, while an Argenti...Key DNA enzyme can tolerate more mutations than expected
...-- as involving a gliding double-helix that breaks apart and smoothly forms new cells as symphonic music swells in the background. But the latest scientific studies show that cell replication is in fact much different, and far more chaotic. There can be a widespread substitution of different elements of t...The power of the mother-child bond
...nt's milk intake, and/or help the baby sleep. Yet apart from possibly helping the mother relax, said Mennella, "there's no scientific evidence that supports the folklore, in fact, it's the opposite." "Some doctors today still recommend drinking before nursing," observed Spear, "but there is still so muc...South Dakota windbreaks need renovation
...planting or renovation these windbreaks will break apart and the risk to agriculture from wind damage will increase." In addition, severe weather such as the ice storms, record snowfall, and blizzard conditions of 1996-1997 also take their toll on tree plantings. In 1997, forester Gregory Josten, from the...UC Berkeley biologist disputes current dogma that genetic mutation is the cause of cancer
...srupt the spindle apparatus that drags chromosomes apart during cell division. Just as unbalanced cables twist a suspension bridge out of shape, so unbalanced spindles twist and improperly separate chromosomes during mitosis, causing duplication and loss of entire chromosomes. The damage such duplication c...A new way to engineer cells: The Staudinger ligation
...ture. Unfortunately, the resulting aza-ylides fall apart in water almost as easily as they form. "We ask...ectron-rich aza-ylide and prevents it from falling apart in water, subsequently yielding a stable amide bond. The technique worked well on the lab bench, ...Food web theory suggests ecology may be governed by general rules
...ies," said Martinez. What sets the "niche model" apart from current models of food web organization, say the researchers, is its ability to accurately predict a set of 12 characteristics, such as the length of food chains, the number of omnivores and cannibals, the distribution of specialists and general...Virus study reveals how nature 'super-sizes' tiny structures
...chinery" needed to infect a cell -- also sets them apart from other viruses. "Most simpler viruses, like rhinovirus, carry a genome that allows them to go into a cell and take over the host-cell's machinery in order to replicate," Baker says. "These viruses, in addition to their genome, carry all the enzym...Scientists capture first images of how x-rays damage proteins
...irst-ever direct observation of how proteins break apart when exposed to high-energy X-rays. "The observation was stunning," said collaborator Joel Sussman, formerly on the staff and now a visiting biologist at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory, where some of this research ...Pitt team first to illustrate mechanisms of chromosome missegregation in cancer cells
...he nuclear mitotic apparatus protein (NuMA), split apart in renegade fashion, generating new poles in an apparently haphazard way. As a result, chromatids migrated to various parts of the cell. During cell division, the haphazard alignment of chromosomes will lead to daughters with different numbers and ...Health of normal synapses seen to depend on neurotrophin signaling
...that the synapses ofdeveloping and adult mice fall apart in the absence of particular neurotrophins. The r... we studied -- the neuromuscular junction -- falls apart over time in much the same way it did in our neurotrophinexperiments," says Rita J. Balice-Gordon, P...Smells may trigger alcohol craving, and relapse, among alcoholics
...es involved in relapse, then we can 'tease' things apart more and screen for possible therapeutic agents." Katner and Weiss believe that more research is needed to better understand the neurobiology of alcohol- or drug-seeking behavior which, when combined with behavior modification and appropriate therap...The evolution of the sex chromosomes: step by step
..., each inversion drove the sex chromosomes farther apart as they evolved.Each piece of the chromosomes that inverted added to the length of DNA thatcould no longer align and recombine. On the Y chromosome, this led todegeneration and shrinking, since deleterious mutations were able to build upfaster on thi...Tracing the evolution of sex chromosomes
...f identical pairs. But two--the Xand the Y--stand apart because they have no perfect match. Nevertheless,evolution has charged these two genetic loners with the critical task of sexdetermination: embryos with two X chromosomes develop into females, whileembryos with an X and a Y chromosome develop into m...Harvard Medical School researchers discover first in a new class of mitosis inhibitors
...e up the duplicated chromosomes andthen pulls them apart suddenly just before the two daughter cells pinch off.Instead, they formed a monoaster, a central point from which microtubulesradiate out, with chromosomes dotted improbably across their middle. Hence thename monastrol. The next step -- iden...Brain compound's anti-aggression effects appear to reverse in monogamous male rodents
...sibility that could help researchers begin totease apart some of the complex biochemical roots of mating-related behaviors. "By focusing on these specialized behaviors, we're starting to pick up on someimportant similarities in the ways they may be triggered," says Stephen Gammie,a postdoctoral fellow in ...