Why piglets shudder to keep warm
...s journal PLoS Genetics. Brown fat helps newborn mammals maintain their body temperature by burning fat, which converts into heat. The protein UCP1 (Uncoupling Protein 1) has a key role in this energy conversion, which takes place in the cell mitochondria. No brown fat or UCP1 protein has been found in d...Newly discovered gene may hold clues to evolution of human brain capacity
...is showed that HAR1 is essentially the same in all mammals except humans. There were only two differences between the chicken and chimp genomes in HAR1's sequence of 118 bases (bases are subunits of DNA, the As, Cs, Ts, and Gs that spell out the genetic code). This similarity means the DNA sequence remained ...Case Western Reserve University paleontologist discovers South American mammal fossils
...to a group of animals called notoungulates--hoofed mammals native only to South America. The group originate... Antarctica and North America. The main groups of mammals living there were marsupials (like opossums), rodents, monkeys, armadillos, sloths, and various hoof...Ultrasound affects embryonic mouse brain development
...d frequent exposure to ultrasound." Neurons in mammals multiply early in fetal development and then migrate to their final destinations following an inside-to-outside sequence. The destination defines the neurons' connectivity and function. It has been reported earlier by others that abnormal cortical fu...Study documents marathon migrations of sooty shearwaters
...iology at UCSC who oversees TOPP studies of marine mammals and seabirds, said the shearwater study was only possible because of the increasing miniaturization of electronic tags. "When we first got together to plan the TOPP program, we didn't know if the technology was available to tag a bird that small,"...Researcher gives hard thoughts on soft inheritance
... expression. "Epigenetics as soft inheritance in mammals puts us on a slippery slope that many people don't want to visit," Richards says. Nutritional epigenomics Still, recent studies in mice and rats have fueled the controversy. Richards cited "a whole new world called nutritional epig...... they were redundant, so today in humans and other mammals there are 39 instead of 52 Hox genes. The study focused on two modern Hox genes: -- The Hoxa1 gene, which helps control how an embryo's brain stem develops and is compartmentalized into seven sections called rhombomeres. When Hoxa1 is disabled...Media advisory: International mercury conference coming to Madison Aug. 6-11
...ethylmercury exposure on the health of wild birds, mammals and fish); Edward Swain, research scientist, Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (socioeconomic consequences of mercury use and pollution); James Wiener, Wisconsin Distinguished Professor, UW-La Crosse (conference technical chair). Prog...'Friend' protein keeps nerve signals in check
... that forthcoming experiments involving tomosyn in mammals such as laboratory mice will show similar results. ......sils of snakes with mouths big enough to eat those mammals appear at about the same time. Other animals that could have eaten our ancestors, such as big cats, and hawks and eagles, evolved much later. Venomous snakes evolved about 60 million years ago, raising the stakes and forcing primates to get better ...NHGRI announces latest sequencing targets
... how, when and why the genomes of humans and other mammals came to be composed of certain DNA sequences. ...e-Scale Sequencing program. Seven mammals which have been previously approved to be sequenced at low-density genome coverage have been targete...Tyrannosaur survivorship -- tough times for teens
... juveniles and subadults of most large terrestrial mammals today." The estimated survivorship curve also provides a possible explanation for the rarity of individual giants--just two per cent of the population lived long enough to attain maximal size and age for the species....Wild meerkats school their young
...arning per se wouldn't be surprising, whether wild mammals teach their young was still debated. The findings were published in this week's edition of the journal Science. Meerkats live in groups of three to 40 individuals in the arid regions of southern Africa. Each group includes a dominant male and fem...Large dinosaurs were extremely hot in their day, UF study finds
...sts that they operated at a rate more like today's mammals and birds. While the largest dinosaurs may not hav...ate 1960s, the notion emerged that dinosaurs, like mammals and birds, might have been warm-blooded, or endotherms, with relatively constant, high body temperat...Math and fossils resolve a debate on dinosaur metabolism
...erms), whereas others thought that dinosaurs, like mammals and birds, might have been warm blooded (endotherms). Still others argued that while most dinosaurs had a metabolism similar to contemporary reptiles, the large dinosaurs managed a higher, more-constant body temperature through thermal inertia, which...West develops taste for primates
...e. "But that is very different to harvesting large mammals such as great apes and elephants," he says. "It would be very hard for that to be sustainable." Davies says that central governments in Africa need to be made aware of the millions of dollars being spent on the parallel economy of the bushmeat trad...Genes linked to daily flux in drug toxicity
...ogical processes. The circadian timing system of mammals has a hierarchical structure, in that a master pacemaker in the brain synchronizes self-sustaining and cell-autonomous circadian clocks present in virtually all tissues, the researchers said. Drivers of circadian rhythms in peripheral cells--such as ...Fertility hope as study shows eggs survive in older ovaries
...e theory, held for more than 50 years, that female mammals are born with a finite number of oocytes (eggs). Two years ago, international researchers speculated that mice could continue to produce eggs throughout puberty and adulthood. Although their speculation caused debate throughout the scientific com...A surprise about our body clock
... to control the internal clock of humans and other mammals works much differently than previously believed, according to a study by Utah and Michigan researchers. The surprising discovery means scientists must change their approach to designing new drugs to treat jet lag, insomnia, some forms of depressio...... a direct result of action by an enzyme, called in mammals checkpoint kinase-2 (CHK2), whose normal role is exclusively in regulating the cell division cycle. CHK2 physically interacts with FRQ; the mutation makes this interaction much stronger. However, a mutant enzyme that has lost its activity has no eff...