Washington University receives $29.5 million to sequence corn genome
...ts and stores. The maize genome's 2.5 billion base pairs in 10 chromosomes make it nearly as long as the human genome, which has 2.9 billion base pairs in 23 chromosomes. When completed, maize will be the largest plant genome sequenced. Although smalle...Seasonal depression, anxiety affects hamsters, study finds
...Siberian hamsters. They were offspring of breeding pairs housed in either long days (16 hours of light a day, such as found in summer) or short days (8 hours of light per day, such as found in winter). Following birth, the hamsters remained in the same light period until weaning (about 20 to 23 days of age...Looking for the genes that affect a person's level of response to alcohol
... study, researchers examined 238 18-to-29-year-old pairs of siblings (about 365 people) who had at least one alcohol-dependent parent. All of the pairs of siblings had had some experience with alcohol use themselves, but were not yet alcohol dependent....'Perception' gene tracked humanity's evolution, scientists say
.... "We found that in a stretch of DNA about 68 base pairs in length upstream of prodynorphin, 10 percent of the sequence was different between us and chimps." Hahn said this "evolutionary burst" is responsible for differences in gene expression rates. When induced, the human prodynorphin gene was 20 percen...New microscope allows scientists to track a functioning protein with atomic-level precision
...uctures that can form when a single strand of DNA pairs with itself instead of with the opposite strand. "Hairpins are wonderful models," Block says. "By keeping the force constant, we were able to measure the folding and unfolding transitions of a single DNA hairpin at the angstrom scale. In the future, ......er, the Variola genome comprises some 190,000 base pairs of DNA, and while somecompanies will make sequences 20,000 or more base pairs long, an attempt to order all the genes necessary to launch a smallpox attack would probably arouse ...Twin molecular scissors link creation of microRNAs with gene-silencing
...nded precursor molecules shaped like hairpins into pairs of short single-stranded miRNAs in essence, nipping off the bend in the pin. RISC then unzips the two single-stranded miRNAs from each other and identifies and holds one as a guide to help it find the specific messenger RNA to be inactivated. Using ...Technique offers new view of dynamic biological landscape
..."dialing down" the activity of a multitude of gene pairs and comparing the effects of those changes to thos...nes would generate nearly 20 million possible gene pairs that would need to be tested. To narrow the number of possible interactions, they adopted a strategy...Researchers develop new method to help find deadly malaria parasite's Achilles heel
...shington who invented an ingenious way to identify pairs of proteins that physically interact with one another, modified his technique and added special culture conditions to enable his group to study Plasmodium. Fields's team and collaborators at Prolexys Pharmaceuticals of Salt Lake City, UT, discovered ...Picky female frogs drive evolution of new species in less than 8,000 years
...spring developed more slowly than the offspring of pairs of northern frogs. Field studies confirmed the laboratory results. Researchers could find no hybrid frogs in the contact zones that were the offspring of southern mothers, judging by the absence of any southern mitochondrial DNA, which is contributed...Flipped genetic sequences illuminate human evolution and disease
...entists found three inversions with two alleles or pairs of genes displaying the human inversion in some people, whereas others had one allele of the human inverted sequence and one allele of the normal sequence in chimps. Having one allele with an inversion and one allele without represents a ticking time...International consortium completes map of human genetic variation
...e exclusive, or "fixed," differences on human's 22 pairs of non-sex (autosomal) chromosomes between the Yoruba samples and the Japanese and Han Chinese samples; 11 between the Yoruba samples and the samples from Utah residents of northern and western European ancestry; and 21 between the Utah samples and t...DNA size a crucial factor in genetic mutations, study finds
...hymine (T), guanine (G) and cytosine (C). A always pairs with T, and G with C. To copy itself, the DNA molecule unwinds and splits. Either strand is now a template to build a new DNA molecule. An enzyme-a protein that speeds the reaction, in this case the bacteria E. coli's DNA polymerase I-moves along the......its." They then went on two show that these neuron pairs with two-way connections belonged to the same fine-scale subnetworks. "This means that inhibitory circuits can also precisely influence the activity of selected sub networks." Callaway says the study demonstrates that neuroscientists "are really get...Your brain cells may 'know' more than you let on by your behavior
...y is to train rhesus monkeys to remember arbitrary pairs of symbols. After being shown the first symbol (i.e. dark clouds) they are presented with two symbols, from which they have to pick the one that has been associated with the initial cue (i.e. umbrella). The reward is a sip of their favorite fruit jui...Genetic cause of speech defect discovered
...This mutation an addition of 1.5 million DNA base pairs was predicted several years ago to exist by Osborne and her collaborator Stephen Scherer of The Hospital for Sick Children and U of T. "While estimated to be present in more than a half million people worldwide, the duplication has evaded detection ...... This information is made of some 2.6 million base pairs (about one thousandth of the human genome), and encodes the synthesis of 2,843 proteins. Natronomonas pharaonis has to deal with two different kinds of life-threatening conditions. It was found in pools which are strongly alkaline (pH-value of about ...NHGRI's large-scale sequencing research network sets its sights on disease targets
...isorders. The human genome consists of 22 matching pairs of chromosome, referred to as autosomal chromosomes, plus a non-matching pair referred to as the sex chromosomes. The sex chromosomes, which are called X and Y, determine whether a person is female (XX) or male (XY). Any defects in genes on the X chr...Cyberkinetics, Case to develop system to help restore extremity function
..." The collaboration between Cyberkinetics and Case pairs two state-of-the-art technologies. Cyberkinetics is the first and, to date, the only group to obtain FDA-approval for a pilot trial in humans using an implantable multichannel, intracortical microelectrode array. The ongoing pilot study aims to test ...