Embryonic selection of sex avoids conceiving blind children
...enerative nature. It causes a serious reduction in visual capacity and, in many cases, leads to blindness. The ailment does not affect males and females equally: in the case of men, there is a 50% probability of suffering the disease. With women, however, they born healthy, bat there is a 50% probability of...Sniffers show that humans can track scents, and that two nostrils are better than one
...als. While it's true that humans are predominantly visual creatures, Sobel said, their olfactory sense can be compared to that of dogs and other mammals. "Our sense of smell is less keen partly because we put less demand on it," Porter said. "But if people practice sniffing smells, they can get really goo...Beyond the book: Software automates access to brain atlases
...a wide range of methods of displaying and organize visual information. The challenge is making it easier to ...e hopes to build on the system to create a general visual interface for neural data, linking brain locations (specified by coordinates) to research results co...Leicester breakthrough in eye disease
...sible drug treatments, its epidemiology, impact on visual function, adaptation of the visual system to the constant eye movements, the causes of the condition and its genetic make-up. They ar...Invitrogen features new scientific online resources at ASCB Meeting
...asurements. It provides a ratiometric read-out at visual excitation wavelengths in the presence of calcium and interferes minimally with cell physiology. Conveniently pre-packaged in the biosafe and nontoxic BacMam insect virus delivery format, Premo cameleon is designed for live-cell application to a broa...Protein protects against nerve degeneration
...lleagues bred flies that lack the protein in their visual system, they found that the neurons degenerated ve...keeping the flies in the dark and preventing their visual neurons from activating. "In the absence of the NMNAT protein, the photoreceptors in the eye develo...University of Alberta researchers discover hummingbird secret
... nucleione that detects any movement of the entire visual worldwas two to five times bigger in the hummingbi... this line of research and have hummingbirds track visual motion while watching the nucleus to see how it reacts....Lemurs' fur color may not define species
...ory cues or smell to recognise each other, than on visual cues, such as coat colour. This could explain why a certain amount of variation in coat colour does not affect species recognition in mouse lemurs. The authors of the study recommend caution when identifying new species of lemurs. They conclude tha...Different coat color may not mean different species for lemurs
...hen identifying new species solely on the basis of visual or genetic characteristics." The lemurs they t...to depend on auditory cues, or smell, more than on visual cues to recognise each other. They say that this could explain why a certain amount of variation in ...Nanoscale microscope sheds first light on gene repair
...needed. Many biological processes lie out of the visual reach of scientists. The benefits of high-resolution electron microscopy are often offset by disruptive sample preparation requirements. Light microscopy allows easier sample prep and observations of living cells, but it has limited resolution. By ma...Sea urchin genome is a biology boon and a computational feat
...d that sea urchins have such a robust gene set for visual perception," said Gary Wessel, a Brown University biology professor and member of the Sea Urchin Genome Sequencing Consortium. "I've been looking at these organisms for 31 years and now I know they were looking back at me." As part of the sequencin...Decoded sea urchin genome shows surprising relationship to humans
...yes or ears, at least as we know them. Some of the visual sensory proteins are located to an appendage known as the tube foot, and likely function in sensory processes there. It is remarkable that the same sensory proteins are used in organs with such different structures in sea urchins and man, said Soderg...A prickly subject: The sea urchin genome is sequenced
...s and ears, at least as we know them. Some of the visual sensory proteins are localized to an appendage known as the tube foot, and probably function in sensory processes there. "The sea urchin reminds us of the underlying unity of all life on earth," notes Erica Sodergren, Ph.D., co-leader of the ...Decoded sea urchin genome shows surprising relationship to man
...es and ears, at least as we know them. Some of the visual sensory proteins are localized to an appendage known as the tube foot, and likely function in sensory processes there. It is remarkable that the same sensory proteins are used in organs with such different structures in sea urchins and man. "The sea...Why our shifty eyes don't drive us crazy
...ears to us as a smooth whole. Somehow, the brain's visual system "knows" where the eyes are about to move an...ischarge, or internal copy, of that command to the visual system. Sommer and Wurtz showed in a 2002 Science paper that a pathway from brainstem to frontal cor...Transplanted photoreceptor precursor cells restore visual function in mice with retinal degeneration
... directly into the eyes of mice and restored their visual function. The achievement is based on a novel t...sidered ready for testing in humans. Restoring visual function in animals is an important advance, but the scientists caution that it shouldn't be conside...Two nerve cells in direct contact
...way hardly change at all. At a higher level in the visual centre in the brain, there must be a computation of the visual information, so that animals can differentiate between their own movement and movement of their envi...News tips from the Journal of Neuroscience
... authors measured transcranial fluorescence in the visual cortex of anesthetized mice before and after one eye had been sewn shut for days or weeks. As expected, monocular deprivation led to decreased light responses from the deprived eye, whereas responses from the nondeprived eye increased in the binocula...Funnel in the eye: Signal focusing increases photosensitivity
...eir rod vision is extremely impeded, so that their visual perception is very limited in poor light. Protein kinase A mediated phosphorylation of connexin36 in mouse retina results in decreased gap junctional communication between AII amacrine cells....U of M study shows treatment of periodontal disease does not decrease risk for preterm birth
...ivitis, periodontal disease cannot be diagnosed by visual examination alone. It is diagnosed with a probe that is inserted into the space between the tooth and gumline. Although periodontal disease is not caused by pregnancy, pregnant women often experience an increase in gingival bleeding, which is though...