Cigarette smoke causes breaks in DNA and defects to a cell's chromosomes, Pitt study finds
...ed simultaneously from both directions much like a piece of taffy, forming so-called anaphase bridges between its two ends. Eventually, these chromosomes either tear apart, leaving two broken pieces, or if they don't break apart, the abnormal, elongated chromosomes may persist after anaphase is completed. ...Pack-MULEs are toting a new look at plant evolution
...le sentimental. The first Pack-MULE she found in a piece of rice sequence was lugging around the gene that triggers cold responses in a plant. In 1998, MSU molecular geneticist Michael Thomashow and his associate found that increasing a plant's expression of a specific regulatory gene helps throw the plan...Hidden diversity: DNA 'barcoding' reveals a common butterfly is actually 10 different species
... examination of a small and standardized signature piece of the genome a technique called DNA barcoding shown that this "species" is really an amalgam of a number of genetically distinct lineages, each with different caterpillars and preferences in food plant and ecosystem. However, as many as six spec...Knock knock knocking on rhythm's neural doors
...e same thing slowed and aborted after only a short piece of rhythmic movement. But in a carefully arranged set of experiments, Schaal and co-workers from Pennsylvania State, and ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories in Kyoto, Japan showed that control mechanisms for the two types of movement are quit...DuPont introduces in-home personal protection from dangers of hurricanes
...re able to deflect a 12-foot, 15-pound two-by-four piece of wood shot out of a cannon at 100 miles per hour. This represents the speed at which a 250-miles-per-hour wind would propel the timber. The DuPont TM StormRoom TM with Kevlar will be available initially in Florida this month through authorized...Bacteria use 'molecular lasso' to cop copper
...rol and protect the bacterial cells from it. One piece of the story still to be learned is how the methanobactin is retrieved by bacterial cells, Kim said. The cells apparently latch onto copper-bearing methanobactin molecules, but what happens next isn't known. Also, unlike a cowboy's lasso, methanobact...Researchers discover why mutant gene causes colon cancer
...division but now we know we've been missing a big piece of the picture," reports David Jones, Ph.D., principal investigator of the study and leader of HCI's Colon Cancer Scientific Program. "What we didn't know was that it converts vitamin A into retinoic acid, which is vital for normal colon cell develop...Breaking new ground in germ cell guidance
...Nakamura, Team Leader; Kobe, Japan) have fit a new piece into this jigsaw with findings recently published in the online edition of Development , describing an intriguing new model of germ cell migration involving a pair of guidance molecules, Wunen and Wunen2, and their discrete activities in germ and som...A genetic disorder yields insight into genes and cognition
... a set of parts--for example, to assemble a simple piece of furniture. In brain-imaging studies of people with WS, the researchers sought to shed light on the neurological malfunction that underlies this inability. In particular, they sought to determine whether the functional disorder could reveal the "mo...Stuck on you: Scientists lay bare secrets of bacterial attachment proteins
...lassified as non-fibre or 'afimbrial'. The new key piece of evidence emerged from some nifty protein engine...roperly as proteins as they are synthesised with a piece of sequence information missing. In nature, the adjacent subunit possesses this bit of missing info...Green tea research leads to gum and other products
...een Tea Chewing Gum, is on store shelves now. Each piece of the mint-flavored, sugar-free gum equals two cu... the gum for preventive health, or just to enjoy a piece of gum, Dr. Hsu said, noting that the cost is comparable to that of regular gum. He suggests chewing...Winner of 2004 EMBO Science Writing Prize announced
...iting Prize is awarded annually for an outstanding piece of science writing that effectively communicates a topical issue to a non-scientific audience. Matthew Bottomley's innovative text fulfils this criterion on every level. The lively dialogue relates double agent James Pond's mission to combat the dead...One-hundred-fifty year old lessons of John Snow still relevant today
...eth, a professor of epidemiology who has written a piece about Snow that will appear in the September issue of the journal Epidemiology. Howard Brody, a professor of family practice and a co-author, said in doing research for the book he was constantly amazed at Snow's ability to think beyond what was alre...New tool predicts how long pollutants will stay in soil
...t to which hazardous contaminants will linger on a piece of land and the rate at which they will migrate toward critical water resources and supplies. The new approach will help them decide whether the pollutants need to be removed and how best to accomplish this, the researchers say. "If we release chemic...Homeland security initiative takes Memphis' ORNL technologies to the nation
...osture of these and other local communities. One piece of Memphis' security package is technology developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory known as Sensornet, a sensor integration architecture for a national warning alert network that greatly expedites detection of biological, chemical, or radiological...Genetic clues found for common congenital brain disorder
...enes began when a child from Kansas with a missing piece of chromosome 3 was found to have DWM and was referred to Dr. Dobyns for an evaluation. Inspired by this clue, Inessa Grinberg, an M.D./Ph.D. student working with Millen and Dobyns, began to scour the Internet looking for parent support web sites for...Rare mutations can significantly increase risk factor for heart disease
...nderstanding of the role of rare genes is just one piece of the complex network of factors that shape heart disease risk, but according to Hobbs, the Dallas Heart Study provides an invaluable means to further examine those factors and their interplay. "We've developed a carefully phenotyped population, wit...U-M scientists find common virus in human prostate tissue
...lesion cells, but not in the nucleus, an important piece of the puzzle fell into place. "We know that for p53 to function as a tumor suppressor gene, its protein product must be in the cell's nucleus," explains Imperiale. "TAg apparently sequesters p53 protein in the cell's cytoplasm, prevent...New discovery may help transplants survive
...ly other parts of the body. And, it could be a new piece of the cancer puzzle. "It has been shown that antigen presenting cells around tumors also express VEGFR-3 and we already know that access to lymphatics and lymph nodes is the way cancers spread through the body," he says. "The findings of Dr. Dana an......eir young may be low levels of a peptide, or small piece of protein, released in the brain that normally activates fear and anxiety, according to new research published in the August issue of Behavioral Neuroscience. "We see this fierce protection of offspring is so many animals," says Ste...