Broken in Biological News

Happier, healthier, more productive hens on omega-3?

... housed in non-cage systems was expressed in the 1990s, when the issue of broken bones within flocks was reported. Latest evidence suggests this is ... systems. The research group has identified a high incidence of broken bones in hens housed in free-range systems. However, preliminary studies ...

CSHL-led team identifies key decision-point at which cells with broken DNA repair themselves or die

... at what they call a decision point as cells decide whether to repair broken DNA strands or commit suicide following DNA damage. In a report ... foci, which allow the cell to summon repair enzymes to the site of broken DNA strands. The team's experiments, conducted by Navasona Krishnan, ....

Microbes in mud flats clean up oil spill chemicals

... of oxygen degradation was slower and only toluene was significantly broken down. This means that in a healthy marine ecosystem where the water is ... breakdown products) are degraded with oxygen only a few can be completely broken down in the absence of oxygen. However, in a contaminated environment ...

Drug-embedded microparticles bolster heart function in animal studies

... of just sitting around in warm water. In addition, the microparticles are broken down by white blood cells called macrophages. "These are actually cells ... and grafts. However, when they are made into particles small enough to be broken down in the body, polyesters cause inflammation exactly what the drugs ...

The structure of the Mre11 protein bound to DNA

... images, it was impossible to know how Mre11 recognizes the ends of the broken DNA and how or even whether it remodels DNA sequences. So just how Mre11 ... the Tainer team reports in Cell is that Mre11 not only finds the ends of broken DNA strands and links them together but also remodels the DNA in ...

When cells go bad

... Cancerous To protect an organism against cancer, most cells with broken or missing telomeres undergo "apoptosis," also known as cell suicide. But ... despite lacking a telomere. "Cells containing chromosomes with broken ends turn on a signal and Chk2 gets activated, and then that activates p53 ...

Duke-NIEHS team shows how DNA repairs may reshape the genome

... National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) have shown how broken sections of chromosomes can recombine to change genomes and spawn new ... on different chromosomes rather than from a simple re-joining of the broken ends on the same chromosome. Chromosome aberrations are a change in ...

SEX4, starch and phosphorylation

... However, to be usable, the starch carbohydrate stored in plants must be broken down to component sugars. Some aspects of starch metabolism have been ... stored by the plant for later use. However, when needed, starch must be broken down to its component sugars for export to the rest of the plant. It ...

Nitrates in vegetables protect against gastric ulcers

... because the stomach constantly has to protect itself so as not to be broken down together with the food ingested. Two such important defence ... because the stomach constantly has to protect itself so as not to be broken down together with the food ingested. Two such important defence ...

Diabetes makes it hard for blood vessels to relax

... blood vessels relax, researchers say. That amino acid, L-arginine, is broken down by the enzyme arginase to urea, which helps the body eliminate toxins ... However most of L-arginine ingested goes directly to the liver to be broken down, not the bloodstream where it can promote relaxation of blood ...

New computer simulation helps explain folding in important cellular protein

... so much is happening physically and biochemically as proteins fold into their functional shapes (called the native state) that the problems must be broken down one by one and studied. That led the team to a question: Could they use a Monte Carlo Simulation along with the Wang-Landau algorithm to ...

Telomeres resemble DNA fragile sites

... common fragile sites, suggesting that TRF1 protects telomeres from becoming fragile. Instead of a continuous string of DNA, the telomeres were broken into fragments of twos and threes. To see if the replication fork stalls at telomeres, de Lange and Sfeir joined forces with Carl L. Schildkraut, a ...

The sound of light: Innovative technology shatters the barriers of modern light microscopy

... Zentrum Mnchen German Research Center for Environmental Health and chair for biological imaging at the Technische Universitt Mnchen, has now broken through this barrier and rendered three-dimensional images through at least six millimeters of tissue, allowing whole-body visualization of adult ...

Trio of signals converge to induce liver and pancreas cell development in the embryo

... how a cell is normally programmed we will eventually be able to directly reprogram other cells," notes Zaret. "An analogy I use here is if a watch is broken and you want to know how to reassemble it, the best thing is to go the factory and see how it is assembled in the first place. That may not be the ...

Omega-3 fatty acids appear to impact AMD progression

... in cellular damage that retinal cells cannot handle, thus damaging eye tissues." dGI is a scale used to determine how quickly carbohydrates are broken down into blood sugar, also known as blood glucose. Foods such as sweetened drinks, sodas and white bread are high-GI because they trigger a sharp ...

What really prompts the dog's 'guilty look'

... Amsterdam, 11 June 2009 - What dog owner has not come home to a broken vase or other valuable items and a guilty-looking dog slouching around the house? By ingeniously setting up conditions where the owner was ...

Knock-out drugs: Narrow window for detection

... for several hours, so that the victim could not remember the incident. It is often difficult to detect knock-out drugs, as they are rapidly broken down by the body. Benzodiazepines can be detected in the blood for a maximum of 24 hours and liquid ecstasy for only 8 hours. For this reason, ...

Award for pioneering stem cell research to mend broken bones

... Funding from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) could lead to the development of new and better treatments for broken bones and other orthopaedic problems associated with ageing. Nearly 4M has been awarded to scientists from the universities of Keele, Imperial ...

Queen's scientists discover eco-friendly wood dissolution

... is reported in the journal Green Chemistry , may see a new sustainable future for industry based on bio-renewable resources. At present wood is broken down mainly by the Kraft pulping process, which originates from the 19th century and uses a wasteful technology relying on polluting chemicals. ...

Novel vaccine approach offers hope in fight against HIV

... A research team may have broken the stubborn impasse that has frustrated the invention of an effective HIV vaccine, by using an approach that bypasses the usual path followed by ...

Heart attacks: The tipping point

... at risk prophylactically, so that electrical coupling signals in diseased hearts resemble a more organized, "tornado-free" pattern. Fixing a broken Heart by Email Dr. Zlochiver's research will no doubt alter the way cardiac arrest is diagnosed and treated. "If we get an image from an MRI or ...

Details of bacterial 'injection' system revealed

... STEM also allows only good, intact molecules to be selected for analysis, which avoids errors inherent in bulk measures of mixtures of intact and broken complexes, a problem that may have affected previous analyses. "Our reconstruction shows an overall size, shape and major sub-component ...

Study offers clues to beating hearing loss

... can be switched on and switched off. When switched off, the tip of its tail curls round and contacts the head, and switched on this contact is broken and the myosin stretches out. This knowledge should help inform any further studies into how a mutation can create problems in hearing." Follow-up ...

Fowl soil additive breaks down crude oil

... the team added chicken manure to soil contaminated with 10 percent volume to weight of crude to soil. They found that the almost 75% of the oil was broken down in soil with the fowl additive after about two weeks. Whereas additive-free soil was naturally remediated to just over 50%. The team carried ...

Genome sequencing of fungus with biotechnological applications

... This substance, lignin, protects the cellulose of the tree from attack by other organisms and the tree loses consistence, it rots and is broken down by other organisms; but it also makes it more difficult for us to obtain the sugar to produce alcohol. So, what we have to do is to break up the ...

Vanderbilt scientists invent world's smallest periscopes

... that is the assembly point where the microscopic polymer tubes that serve as part of the cell's cytoskeleton are assembled before cell division and broken down afterwards. The mirrored pyramidal wells provide a high resolution, multi-vantage-point form of microscopy that also makes it easier for ...

Rot's unique wood degrading machinery to be harnessed for better biofuels production

... with rigidity and protection from pests. By doing so, the organic compound cellulosethe long chain of glucose (sugar) units can be unbound, broken down, fermented, and distilled into liquid transportation fuel. This is where the destructive capabilities of rot come in. "The microbial world ...

New method monitors critical bacteria in wastewater treatment

... as nitrifying bacteria because they convert toxic ammonia from human wastes and fertilizer runoff into compounds called nitrites, which are further broken down by other bacteria into harmless nitrogen gas. Sensor data reveal how well the bacteria are absorbing ions, or electrically charged atoms and ...

Human DNA repair process recorded in action

... Rad51 takes a leading role in the action. Always on call in the cell, molecules of the protein assemble into a long filament along a damaged or broken segment of DNA, where they help stretch out the coiled strands and align them with corresponding segments on the cell's second copy of the ...

New computational technique allows comparison of whole genomes as easily as whole books

... for whole genome comparison and a way to test comparison methods. But while text comparison involves looking at word frequency; genomes cannot be broken down into words. "I can compare two books in two different ways. I can pick a few sentences, say a hundred that I subjectively decided are ...

Process can cut the cost of making cellulosic biofuels

... of cellulose and hemicellulose in plants 75 percent more efficient than when conventional enzymes alone are used. Cellulose in plants must be broken down into fermentable sugars before they can be turned into biofuel. "Doctoral student Ming Lau and I have shown that it's possible to use AFEX to ...

Biologists discover link between CGG repeats in DNA and neurological disorders

... Mass. Researchers have long known that some repetitive DNA sequences can make human chromosomes "fragile," i.e. appearing constricted or even broken during cell divisions. Scientists at Tufts University have found that one such DNA repeat not only stalls the cell's replication process but also ...

Leptin's long-distance call to the pancreas

... was lower in mice lacking the leptin receptor, indicating a connection between leptin and the sympathetic nervous system. When that connection was broken by deleting the adrenaline receptor from mice osteoblasts, insulin levels shot up. The researchers then dosed mice with a sympathetic stimulator. ...

Breast cancer genome shows evolution, instability of cancer

... published genome sequence of a breast cancer cell line reveals a heavily rearranged genetic blueprint involving breaks and fusions of genes and a broken DNA repair machinery, said researchers at Baylor College of Medicine in a report that appears online in the journal Genome Research . "It's like ...

Pitt, NETL researchers report molecular chain reaction thought to be impossible

... chain reaction that rearranged the bonds in 10 consecutive molecules positioned on a gold surface. As each molecule's original bond was broken by the reaction, the molecule rearranged itself to form a new molecule. Study coauthor Kenneth Jordan, a Distinguished Professor of Chemistry in ...

September 2007 Sumatran earthquakes research findings

... Observatory of Singapore, Nanyang Technological University, "Before the 2007 earthquakes, we knew that a big section still farther south had not broken for the last two centuries. There was great concern that this patch would break. What we learned in this study is that only part of it did during ...

Calcium and vitamin D may not be the only protection against bone loss

... less able to excrete the acid. One way the body may counteract the acid from our diets is through bone resorption, a process by which bones are broken down to release minerals such as calcium, phosphates, and alkaline (basic) salts into the blood. Unfortunately, increased bone resorption leads to ...

It takes 2 to tango

... than hitherto assumed. Once the flow of information to be passed on by a cell is reduced, many of the meanwhile superfluous transmitter stations are broken down. Furthermore, since this novel experimental approach enabled them to watch the contacts between boutons and spines breaking down directly under ...

Systems biology brings hope of speeding up drug development

... and interact in different organs and metabolic pathways. That is the much greater challenge of systems biology, requiring the whole organism to be broken down into manageable systems that can be linked together to make predictions such as the effect of a particular candidate drug. These systems were ...

AGU journal highlights: Nov. 11, 2008

... across the United States, with California accounting for approximately 10 percent of the burned area. Many of California's fires were ignited by broken power lines in fall 2007. Severe drought, hot weather, and unusually strong Santa Ana winds helped to rapidly spread these fires. To quantify the ...