Mutagenesis in Biological News

Forced evolution: Can we mutate viruses to death?

... values will lead to this delocalization. A competing theory is that a mutagenesis drug may eradicate a virus or bacterial population by reducing the fitness ... the new model, drug designers looking to create pills to induce lethal mutagenesis couldn't say for certain under what parameter ranges the drugs really ...

Structural biology scores with protein snapshot

... active site looks nothing like any other kinase active site it's a unique architecture," Sanders said. The researchers also performed exhaustive mutagenesis studies in which they characterized mutations at each amino acid in DAGK and used the data to map the active site of the enzyme onto the structure. ...

The 21st century tomato

... for size, shape, texture, flavor, shelf-life, and nutrient composition, more or less, one trait at a time. With the advent of molecular biology, mutagenesis and genetic transformation could produce tomatoes that were more easily harvested or transported or turned into tomato paste. Frequently, however, ...

Biomarkers allow doctors to match therapy to patient

... regulated at a molecular level by specific genes. To identify these genes involved in cell growth, they used a functional screen based on insertion mutagenesis with mouse retroviruses. This unique approach in human solid tumor cells took more than a decade of painstaking work. Some of the seven genes the ...

Cold Spring Harbor Protocols features methods to screen genomes and analyze evolution

... Protocols ( www.cshprotocols.org/TOCs/toc4_08.dtl ) highlights a method for screening the mouse genome using ENU mutagenesis. The method, "Mouse mutagenesis Using N -ethyl- N -nitrosourea (ENU)," was submitted by Monica Justice and colleagues from the Baylor College of Medicine ...

Scientists unravel the genetic coding of the pea

... for both basic science and for crop improvement. TILLING is an alternative to Agrobacterium-based techniques, and uses EMS (ethane methyl sulfonate) mutagenesis coupled with a gene-specific detection of single-nucleotide mutations. This reverse genetic strategy can be applied to all types of organisms and can ...

Environmental epigenetics has potential for preventing and treating disease

... that are inherited without changing the sequence of DNA. An article publishing in the January 2008 issue of Environmental and Molecular mutagenesis examines some of the epigenetic mechanisms linked to disease, and explores how they occur and their significance in understanding, treating and ...

Biophysical Society announces winners of 2008 Minority Travel Awards

... I that Contributes to Differential Transmitter Release. Kerrick, Nevels, University of Maryland School of Pharmacy, Site-Directed mutagenesis of the Bt Toxin Cyt1A for Intramolecular Distance Determination by FRET. Joseph Sabat, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Proximal Ligand ...

'Jumping genes' could make for safer gene delivery system

... or jumping genes, argues Lambert, are a potentially safer way to go. "You lose the infectivity component and you minimize the insertional mutagenesis risk." Techniques for targeting transposon vectors to regions of the genome devoid of cancer genes are being refined. Meanwhile, a key advantage ...

Novel method reveals how menthol discovery could point towards new or improved pain therapies

... in the journal's April edition (Vol. 9, No. 4). Utilizing a novel mutagenesis and high-throughput screening approach, the study assayed 14,000 TRPM8 ... ion channel protein that would have been difficult to obtain using other mutagenesis methods." Because the methodology can be used to screen for ...

High resolution 'snapshots' detail dynamics of a cocaine antibody

... This, Zhu pointed out, provides a foundation for the humanization and mutagenesis of the antibody to enhance its cocaine-hydrolyzing activity and make ... introduced into first generation antibody catalysts by multiple rounds of mutagenesis and selection to produce improvements. In essence, this would allow ...

Sleeping beauty plays a significant role in identifying cancer genes

... D. "Cancer gene discovery in solid tumours using transposon-based somatic mutagenesis in the mouse," Nature, Vol. 436, No. 7047. Dupuy A., Akagi K., Largaespada D., Copeland N., Jenkins N. "Mammalian mutagenesis using a highly mobile somatic Sleeping Beauty transposon system," Nature, ...

Cigarette smoke alters DNA in sperm, genetic damage could pass to offspring

... as irreversible changes in the genetic composition of off-spring.” said Carole Yauk, Ph.D., lead author of the study and research scientist in the mutagenesis Section of Health Canada’s Environmental and Occupational Toxicology Division. “We have known that mothers who smoke can harm their fetuses, and here ...

Researchers from the UGR use a bacterium to obtain biopreservatives from food

... approaches the molecular aspects of the permeabilization that AS-48 exerts on bacterial membranes. "We designed a strategy to carry out site-directed mutagenesis on the as-48A gene, the one which generates enterocin AS-48", the researcher from Granada pointed out, "and we have studied the role of seven amino ...

Study may help slay 'Yellow Monster'

... bind to DNA, but Stearns and her colleagues are the first to identify this trait with uranium. Their results were published recently in the journals mutagenesis and Molecular Carcinogenesis. Their findings have far-reaching implications for people living near abandoned mine tailings in the Four Corners ...

By creating molecular bridge, scientists change function of a protein

... steroid, then another, until accepting the desired one -- corticosterone, a potent glucocoticoid. In total, Zhao and Chen did four rounds of random mutagenesis and screened about 1 million mutants before they found two estrogen receptor mutants that can be activated by corticosterone. The whole process was ...

New insight into regulation of blood stem cells

... colleagues from the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation in San Diego found a way around this problem. The researchers used random mutagenesis and screening to find animals with hematopoiesis defects, and they used genetics to identify the causative gene. One line mapped to a mutation in the ...