Cell damage caused by brushing may help keep gums healthy
... torn cells. They then brushed the teeth, gums and tongue of rats with a modified electric toothbrush. We sa...ace, it transmits forces quite readily. The gum, tongue and other surfaces in the oral cavity are covered with layers of epithelial cells that serve as a na...Sour taste make you pucker? It may be in your genes
...le to detect and translate acidic molecules on the tongue into a neural signal that the brain perceives as sour. Demonstrating a genetic component to individual differences in sour taste is the first step in pinpointing the genes that determine sensitivity. The products of those genes, in turn, are likely...Columbine flowers develop long nectar spurs in response to pollinators
...-happens in a way that allows flowers to match the tongue lengths of the pollinators that drink their nectar, biologists have found. The researchers were Justen Whittall of the University of California at Davis and Scott Hodges of the University of California at Santa Barbara. They were funded by the Nati...News tips from the Journal of Neuroscience
...) and E12 of fetal development, a period preceding tongue formation. Other pregnant rats received the custom diet from E3 to postnatal day 28 (P28). The authors labeled three gustatory nerves to visualize their central terminal fields in the nucleus of the solitary tract. At 40 d postnatal, rats born to mot...Studies of population genetics, evolution are an exercise in bad taste
...or bitter-taste receptors, tiny receptacles on the tongue that intercept harsh-tasting chemicals from food. Each of these genes comes in several forms, and the forms you carry help determine how you perceive bitter-tasting compounds. The ability to taste or not taste bitter foods might have played a role ...News tips from the Journal of Neuroscience
...her site also increased "liking" responses such as tongue protrusions and "wanting" behavior such as food consumption. However, injection of an opioid antagonist, naloxone, at one site and DAMGO at the other revealed a difference. Both hotspots were required for opioid enhancement of "liking" responses, but...Synthetic peptide targets latent papilloma virus infections
...le-like warts. Unlike unsightly warts on the skin, tongue or penis, warts in the cervix are often flat and easily overlooked unless laboratory staining is used to find signs of pathology, as in Pap screening. If untreated or left to flare up repeatedly, the warts can progress to cancer. Earlier work by Bot...Cambridge led team discovers gene mutation which prevents carriers from feeling pain
... injuries, including injuries to their lips and/or tongue from biting themselves when young. By studying these individuals, the scientists were able to determine that a mutation in the gene SCN9A causes a loss of function in the voltage-gated sodium channel it encodes (subunit Nav1.7). Sodium channels...Penn researchers discover initial steps in the development of taste
...of Wnt proteins in surface cells of the developing tongue prevents taste-bud formation, while stimulating Wn...in the small bumps in the surface and sides of the tongue called papillae. The signaling pathway activated by Wnt proteins is critical to the development o...Researchers show that veins stiffen as we age
...y also administered a nitroglycerin pill under the tongue of each participant to relax the veins. In each case, they found that the tests had no effect on the response of the veins in either age group. "Thus, we think that the stiffening of our veins as we age is probably due to structural changes, such as...Ohio University researchers discover evolutionary oddity in flamingos
...d swish their heads from side-to-side. Their large tongue acts like a piston, sucking water into the front o...en pushing it out the sides. Fringed plates on the tongue trap algae and crustaceans in the circulating water. "The flamingos' feeding habits have capture...Teenager moves video icons just by imagination
...nsional Space Invaders game by actually moving his tongue and hand. He was then asked to imagine the same movements, but not to actually perform them with his hands or tongue. When he saw the cursor in the video game, he then controlled it with his brain. "He cleared out the whole level one basically on b...News tips from the Journal of Neuroscience
...th abnormal accumulation of cytoplasm in the inner tongue of compact myelin sheaths and a reduction in myelin thickness. 3. Waking up to Histamine Neurons Kazumi Takahashi, Jian-Sheng Lin, and Kazuya Sakai Like a shot of espresso, neurons in the hypothalamus keep you awake and alert throughout the...Gene key to taste bud development identified
...mulates stem cells on the surface of the embryonic tongue and in the back of the mouth to transform into tas...de insights into the interactions between SOX2 and tongue stem cells during embryonic development, but also into how stem cells continue to operate in adults,...Oldest juvenile skeleton discovered will help piece together human development
... voice-box, and supports muscles of the throat and tongue involved in speech. The one discovered in the infant appeared to be primitive and more similar to hyoids found in apes than humans, according to Spoor, who has studied the evolution of this region in humans and other primates. The findings are expec...Social imitation in neonatal monkeys
...) and then made one of several gestures, including tongue protrusion, mouth opening, lip smacking, and hand ...tongues far more often in response to researchers' tongue protrusions compared with control conditions, and smacked their lips far more often while watching r...Researchers identify the cells and receptor for sensing sour taste
... in a subpopulation of taste receptor cells of the tongue that do not function in sweet, bitter, or umami ta... sensors." A contrasting view held that individual tongue cells detect more than one taste modality, with the quality of the taste being encoded in a complica...Scientists solve sour taste proteins
...o proteins in the taste buds on the surface of the tongue that are responsible for detecting sour tastes. Wh...onosodium glutamate or MSG). Each taste bud on the tongue contains separate, distinct subsets of cells that specifically detect each taste -- sweet cells resp...Scientists map the flight of the bumblebee
...and flowering currant. The length of a bumblee's tongue influences the choice of flower species it feeds on - some long-tongued bumblebees are close to extinction in the UK (Bombus terrestris, the focus of this study, is short-tongued). Bumblebees leave chemical 'post-it' notes on flowers they have ju......tic on farm fields Toward a tastier electronic tongue Sexy head turner Lessons from Magic Nano Taming the toxicity of carbonnanotubes Journalists' Helper of theWeek <a id="tamiflu"name="tamiflu"> ARTICLE #1a & #1b Two new recipes for bird-flufighter Tamiflu Journal of theA...