NSF awards 22 new projects for plant genome research
...m is to understand the structure, organization and function of genomes of plants of economic importance and pl...f Georgia researchers will study the structure and function of maize centromeres, which play a central role in cell division and ensure that the newly divided c...$2.7 million grant to support creation of virtual zebrafish atlas
...ocus on understanding how genes determine form and function during organisms' life spans, across the spectrum of earthly life forms. Ultimately, I believe this integrated approach will give us a deeper understanding of life and disease." Cheng is the organizer of a Federation of American Societies for Experim......ore. Given a certain budget for fruit, the utility function says how many of each you should buy. Similarly, K...red movements, then inferred an underlying utility function that presumably describes bias in the nervous system for different movements. The researchers...Binocular rivalry: Fulfilling visual expectations
...back," direction, but much less is known about the function of these signals. A recent study by graduate students Tamara Watson and Joel Pearson and their supervisor Dr. Colin Clifford at the University of Sydney suggests that these feedback signals carry information about what we expect to see and that these...'Fossil genes' reveal how life sheds form and function
... plants and animals, including humans. Their sole function is devoted to the utilization of galactose, suggesting that the yeast experienced an ecological shift that somehow removed galactose from the organism's menu, thereby making the galactose-processing genes obsolete. The relic genes, according to Hitti...Prion propagation: Avoiding the toxic oligomer
The key to any protein's function is its structure. Improperly folded proteins are normally destroyed. But in a wide range of diseases, including prion (from proteinaceous and infectious) diseases and neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson disease and Alzheimer disease, amyloid f...Loss of the neuronal adhesion protein d-catenin leads to severe cognitive dysfunction
...n. Human chromosome-5 truncations that disrupt the function of the d-catenin gene correlate with the severity of mental retardation in Cri-du-Chat Syndrome; in addition, d-catenin is known to interact with Presenilin 1, the protein most often mutated in Familial Alzheimer's disease. Despite these observation...22nd amino acid synthesized and added to genetic code of e. coli bacteria
...e if the translator enzyme for L-pyrrolysine would function normally within a living cell. To test that, they inserted the enzyme into Escherichia coli bacteria. Researchers use E. coli as an easy test for some basic biological functions. Once inside the microbe, the enzyme was able to change the genetic codi...Joslin researchers clarify mechanisms for beta-cell formation
...ch the body needs increasing amounts of insulin to function properly, including keeping blood glucose levels in the normal range. It is a major contributor to type 2 diabetes, obesity and the metabolic syndrome, which affect nearly one-quarter of the American population. For years, the body compensates f...JCI table of contents September 15, 2004
...er, only CpG-DNA could activate ERK, thus it could function through a Cot/Tpl2-independent pathway. Both peritoneal macrophages and immature DCs from the bone marrow of Cot/Tpl2/ mice showed increased IL-12 expression in response to CpG-DNA. Northern blot analysis and gel shift assays demonstrated that enhanc...New fruitfly model of diabetes has future implications for pancreatic cell transplantation
...ing the human genome for genes that have a similar function in how alpha and beta cells develop. "This will be useful information for researchers trying to program undifferentiated embryonic stem cells from other tissues to grow islet cells for cell-replacement therapies," explains Rulifson. "We're tryi...Peering inside the body, with a new spinliterally
...living tissues. "It's a noninvasive way to look at function of living organs and the components at work in them such as fat, glucose and other metabolites," said Robert Wind, a physicist and laboratory fellow at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and slow-spin technique inventor...Genetically modified bacterium as remedy for intestinal diseases
...n of the stomach-intestinal tract. This structural function ensures that TFF never arrives in the intestine through oral administration, because along the way it attaches itself somewhere in the stomach-intestinal tract. This was also demonstrated in the tests on mice with acute enteritis: oral administration...TANGO: towards faster prognosis of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases?
...contained in our genes. But in order to be able to function properly, a protein must also fold itself correctly into its 3-dimensional structure. Sometimes this goes wrong and the proteins stick together, making them toxic and causing diseases like Alzheimer's. TANGO makes prediction of faulty protein struc......arts. Both types of cells contribute to the body's function in distinct ways, with epithelium being the essent...l epithelialization, while interference with Cdc42 function by a specific inhibitor caused an unusually high number of the mesenchymal cells to take on epitheli...Molecule awakens and maintains neural connections
...their colleagues found that interfering with Dasm1 function drastically decreased AMPA receptor function. Thei...ynapse maturation is quite important." While the function of Dasm1 is not yet known, said Lily Yeh Jan, the protein's structure hints that it is a receptor mo...Researchers identify distinctive signature for metastatic prostate cancer
...e role that the Hedgehog pathway might play in the function of normal progenitor cells." To study the relationship of the Hedgehog pathway to normal prostate stem cells, the researchers performed experiments in mice in which they eliminated the male hormone, androgen, causing regression of the prostate. Norm...Images of 'tail' of protein needed for cell multiplication suggest anticancer drug targets
...left unchecked, could cause cancer. Until now, the function of the E2 tail was unknown, according to Brenda Sc... of biochemical reactions that performs a specific function in the cell." The E1, E2 and E3 enzymes that make up the workshop that prepares NEDD8 to modify Cul1...Missing genes may help explain why plague bacteria are so deadly
...3 percent of Y. pseudotuberculosis genes no longer function in Y. pestis," he said. "We found that the number of insertion sequence (IS) elements (DNA sequences capable of interfering with gene expression) has dramatically expanded in Y. pestis, delineating the probable role of IS expansion in the elimination...Cell's gatekeeper for ammonia revealed in unprecedented detail
...nced liver failure disrupts central nervous system function when ammonium ion concentrations are elevated, research shows, so the channel's high efficiency is vital. Each channel threads in and out of the cell membrane 11 times and is structured so that no ammonium ion, NH4+, nor any other ion, can pass throu...