Beetle uses fecal defense against predators
...2-2646). The reason for the breakdown in a nearly perfect defense remains a mystery. "You could call this the ultimate in recycling," says Thomas Eisner, Cornell's Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of Chemical Ecology, describing the golden strands of feces extruded from the beetle's hindgut and fashioned into...Genes or environment: what shapes the sensory homunculus?
...ertain auditory brain areas between musicians with perfect pitch and nonmusicians. These differences, the authors write, develop around the 30th week of pregnancy, and might therefore be genetic. The other study showed that string players had a larger cortical representation of the digits on their left hand ......sed on the principle of just good enough, it's not perfect at all. I think we can build robots today better than any one organism. We can do that now."...Memory, forgetfulness help hamsters time breeding
...y exposures were apparently forgotten. "That makes perfect sense in terms of what goes on in the wild," Prendergast says, noting that 13 weeks is a fourth of a year or about one season. "Any day length information that the hamster learned more than 13 weeks ago would lead it to make the wrong 'decision' abou...Scientists find unique nuclear DNA structure
...ent immunoglobulin classes are created is a nearly perfect system," noted Michael Lieber, M.D., Ph.D., professor of pathology and biochemistry, and the study's principal investigator. "And yet, the DNA mechanism for how a cell switches from producing one class to producing another has remained a mystery for ...DFG to launch 21 new priority programmes
... programme. In order to ensure optimum growth and perfect development, plants have to transport a wide variety of substances, including sugar, amino acids, hormones and water, over long distances and distribute them among their individual cells. Transport is catalysed by protein molecules in the cell membra...Susan Okie receives microbiology communcations award
... that the battle against tuberculosis provided the perfect opportunity to show how far medicine has come in combating pathogenic agents as well as the limits of modern science in fighting age-old scourges at the dawn of a new century," said The Washington Post Science Editor Rob Stein, who nominated her for ......ough related to identify them. It is this lack of perfect identity that provides such strong support for evolutionary theory." He adds that scientists are now able to identify the genes in other species, such as fruit flies, figure out their function, then look at humans for similar genes to see if they pl...Study shows receptor molecule facilitates introduction of corrected genes into cells
Medical researchers trying to perfect gene therapy face a major obstacle in inserting corrected genes into cell nuclei where they can direct production of healthy proteins that the defective cellular machinery cannot make. In the past, scientists have used weakened viruses as vectors to...UCSD researchers find genetic key to puzzling congenital disease
...s, and for programmed cell death. We have a nearly perfect mouse model of this disease," said Constantin Makris, Ph.D., principal author on the paper and a postdoctoral fellow in the UCSD lab of Michael Karin, Ph.D., who discovered the IKK complex. "This is important because IP has been a mystery that nobod...Saving the whales -- how scientists measure success
...especially challenging, because even if there were perfect information, political will and unlimited resources, it might not be possible to adopt any single action that would immediately increase the population growth rate of the northern right whale," they state. In analyzing a variety of whales which diff...Compound that switches off appetite in mice discovered by Hopkins scientists
...ked headlines and as-yet unrealized hopes for the perfect diet drug. In support of their characterization of C75, the investigators note it caused a dramatic weight drop in leptin-free mice predisposed to obesity. Yet the compound also reversed the insulin-resistant form of diabetes those mice experience....Researchers determine improved pattern for artificial light-harvesting molecule
...earchers can use them to release a chemical at the perfect moment, but only recently have scientists realized some of their potential. The organic molecules look like snowflakes, with tiny limbs branching out in all directions to capture a ray of light and channel its energy into the molecule's heart. There ...Rickets making comeback among breastfed infants, especially blacks, N.C. doctors find
...s natural production of vitamin D. Although almost perfect otherwise, breast milk is not a good source of vitamin D. Also, on average, people of all races in the United States are outdoors far less than their ancestors. "For the past million years, people didn't spend a lot of time watching television in ho...NIGMS awards 'Glue Grant' to create virtual cell
...g. According to Gilman, studying mouse cells makes perfect sense since many of the molecules that scientists know are central to communication inside and between cells are nearly identical between the cells of mice and people. Within the next year or so, the complete genetic sequence of the mouse will be sp......tions within each individual's HLA gene complex; a perfect HLA-type match exists only among identical twins. The effectiveness of a person's immune defenses for detecting and destroying trespasser antigens depends largely on his or her HLA gene complex. Similarly, these genes are suspected of playing a role...Research paves the way for faster, better, cheaper DNA detection method
...lution containing the target. At room temperature, perfect and partial matches alike bind to the oligonucleot.... Next, temperature is used to differentiate the perfect match from a close match. A stringency wash is applied to the slide in which the temperature is rais...Brown researchers use wildcards to develop better way to sequence DNA
... for use as the gaps in DNA probes. A perfect universal base would attach itself to all four bases in DNA. If the universal bases behave closely to ideal, this is by far a superior method, Preparata said. It would be a fundamental change in the way of doing sequencing...Tiny RNA may be universal regulator of developmental timing in animals
...uvkun team used genome sequence searches to detect perfect matches to the let-7 RNA in the Drosophila (fruit fly) and human genome databases. They then showed that humans and flies also express this 21-nucleotide RNA and that in flies and zebrafish these tiny RNA genes are turned on only at late stages of de......ent this idea." "You are right, I think its a perfect example of innovation, and obviously it would be nice to get more funding to explore other aspects of this," said Dr Dry. "We are getting some funding for PhD students so we shouldnt be complaining too much, but Im about to write another application...