Disabling a sensory organ prompts female mice to act like male mice
... vomeronasal organ surgically, we found the animal had the same phenotype" as the engineered mice, Dulac explained. The new insight into the mechanisms that govern sexual behavior in animals gives science a new avenue to explore the molecular and physiological pathways that lead to differences in sexua...A sensory organ, not the brain, differentiates male and female behavior in some mammals
... with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. "Nobody had imagined that a simple mutation like this could in...ually impregnating all of them. Once these females had given birth, Dulac and her colleagues observed a striking lack of maternal behavior. After giving bi...Census of Marine Life historians detail collapse of bluefin tuna population off northern Europe
...ditional Mediterranean fisheries. In 1949, Norway had 43 boats in pursuit of the bluefin; the next year it had 200. Norwegian catches briefly exceeded 10,000 tons per year in the early 1950s. Better means of ...Universe's stringy birth revealed by young Czech scientist in EURYI winning project
...olution of an equation in string field theory that had gone unsolved for 20 years. The elegance and beauty of the solution have been widely praised in a field that is highly regarded for its aesthetic appeal, drawing together many important concepts in mathematics and physics. The EURYI Awards scheme, en...Immunity in social amoeba suggests ancient beginnings
...that the progenitor of all multicellular organisms had this pathway. Since that organism was not likely multicellular, it must have used it as some kind of signaling to respond to bacteria in the environment. Looking at it from another point of view, its possible that one of the properties of those (c...New survey documents the headaches of computerized medicine
...the hospitals surveyed regardless of how long they had been using CPOE. The survey was the first to quantify the breadth and importance of CPOEs unintended consequences. The survey results were described in a research paper published in the July/August issue of the peer-reviewed Journal of the American ...Forecasting system provides flood warnings to vulnerable residents of Bangladesh
...ome of the worst impacts of rising waters. If they had sufficient warning, they could harvest at least a portion of their ripening crops, move some livestock to safety, encircle fish ponds with nets to prevent fish from escaping, and stock food and other supplies. "The goal here is to help very local, ...Discredited Korean embryonic stem cells' true origins revealed
...mid evidence that researchers Hwang Woo-Suk et al. had falsified their data. An initial investigation of...as inconclusive, and the cells' origin, until now, had never been fully explained in a peer-reviewed journal. Kim, Daley and collaborators used sophistic...... to fix them," says Costes. "The first question we had to answer was how closely RIF are associated with DSBs." Costes recognized that one way to test the association was to calculate how energy was deposited by different kinds of radiation. A high-energy particle, for example, moves through the nucle...Biologists at Tufts University discover 1 reason why chromosomes break, often leading to cancer
... DNA structure leads to fragility Past research had predicted the flexibility of the DNA helix in this...ls, chromosomes can break Next, the researchers had to determine how the chromosomes were breaking. From past studies, they hypothesized that breakage w...Chickadee, nutchatch presence in conifers increases tree growth, says CU-Boulder study
... that branches on 42 trees rigged to exclude birds had 18 percent less foliage and 34 percent less wood growth by the end of the study. Mooney collected about 150,000 insect specimens from the mountain study area, identifying more than 300 separate spider and insect species collectively known as arthr...Success or failure of antidepressant citalopram predicted by gene variation
...he increased likelihood was small, but when people had both this variation and one in a different gene sh...pression, collected from 1,297 of the patients who had participated in STAR*D. The genetic material included the occasional variations that occur from pers...Coelacanth fossil sheds light on fin-to-limb evolution
...we found it, Friedman said, adding that the fossil had fallen off a cliff a couple of hundred feet high and landed in a different set of rocks. The four-inch long specimen details the fin of the animal, which the scientists approximate would have been about 18 to 24 long. The scientists will return to ...Marijuana component opens the door for virus that causes Kaposi's sarcoma
...ntrol cellular processes. Dr. Groopmans laboratory had previously demonstrated that THC could have a protective effect against a certain form of invasive, drug-resistant lung cancer. To study the combined effect of THC and KSHV, the researchers examined a culture of human skin cells, which are suscept...Altering a protein makes mice less fearful
...ed on ASIC1a because earlier research from the lab had shown that the protein was important in learned fe...uld find something that was more specific, or even had a different set of side effects, that could be an advantage." Although this study examined the eff...COX-2 inhibitors delay pancreatic cancer precursors in mice
...PanINs in KrasG12D (10 percent of pancreatic ducts had PanIN-2 or -3 in KrasG12D mice on nimesulide diet versus 40 percent of pancreatic ducts had PanIN-2 or -3 in KrasG12D mice on normal diet). Because the pancreases of mice were analyzed at 10...Phase II study of therapeutic vaccine shows efficacy in patients with metastatic colorectal cancer
...hrinkage of their tumors and one patient no longer had any detectable tumors. Researchers noted no complications stemming from TroVax vaccination or any other evidence that would call into question the safety of the vaccine. While the study was not designed to prove that patients survived longer than ...Einstein researchers' prototype vaccine could provide improved protection against tuberculosis
...th BCG, animals vaccinated with the mutant vaccine had much larger populations of the vital CD8+ memory T cells that a vaccine must elicit to optimally protect against infection. Since the completion of this study, the Einstein researchers have knocked out an additional gene that has made the vaccine s...Handicapping tuberculosis may be the way to a better vaccine
...as going on, Jacobs and his team used a mouse that had been genetically altered to have all of its T lymp... response, proliferated much more in the mice that had been infected with the apoptosis-inducing strain. This means that the immune system was able to dete......ich one tempting and one not-so-tempting food item had to be reached with human help. But to test the o... signals. The response showed that the orangutan had intended a particular result, anticipated getting it, and kept trying until it got the result, Cartm...