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Tag: "spiders" at biology news

Spider Venom Could Yield Eco-Friendly Insecticides

...rectly from its fangs. Since Australian funnel-web spiders can live for more than five years in captivity, a small group of these spiders yields plenty of toxins for King's chemical analysis. Funnel-web spider venom is a complex brew of ...

Caloric restriction won't dramatically extend life span in humans: UCLA research

...lan said. "The same result has been found in fish, spiders and many other species. If it works for them, some thought, it should work for us; I'm here to tell you it doesn't." Phelan, co-author of the book, "Mean Genes," conducted his dissertation at Harvard University 10 years ago on caloric restriction an...

Spiders help scientists discover how muscles relax

... the 1980s. Striated muscles from the large, hairy spiders contain filaments that are particularly well ordered, making them easier to study structurally than the more disorganized filaments found in vertebrate striated muscle, Padron explained. Padron and Lorenzo Alamo at IVIC partnered with Roger Craig, ...

Scientists uncover new clues about brain function in human behavior

...reased anxiety that is non-social, such as fear of spiders or heights (phobias) and worry excessively. For several years, scientists have suspected that abnormal processing in the amygdala, an almond-shaped structure deep in the brain, may be involved in this striking pattern of behavior. The amygdala's res...

UF study first to quantify validity of DNA I.D. tool using marine snails

...e away from cowries or birds into nematodes or sea spiders and other creatures that people don't know much about," he said. "That's where the problem in identifying different species is greatest, where the bulk of the diversity of life is, including large numbers of undescribed forms." In those cases where ...

Evolution mystery: Spider venom and bacteria share same toxin

...ral gene transfer of a dermonecrotic toxin between spiders and bacteria." "We are piecing together an histor...h was inspired by the fact that we have a group of spiders with a unique toxin, and that toxin also happens to exist outside the animal kingdom in this particu...

Amber reveals ecology of 30 million year old spiders

... the first comparative scientific study of ancient spiders trapped in amber more than 30 millions years ago. The study of fossilised spiders from the Baltic (Poland) and the Dominican (Caribbean) regions has revealed new insights into the ec...

'Scent of a woman' tells male redback spiders to find a mate

...velopmental adaptations in male Australian redback spiders (Latrodectus hasselti) that give these guys an edg...se to both sexual and natural selection." Redback spiders are relatives of black widow spiders and the marble-sized female redbacks dwarf the males, who are a...

MIT engineers probe spiders' polymer art

...f vests. But engineers have not managed to do what spiders do effortlessly. In a study published in the Nov...echanical engineering, and colleagues examined how spiders spin their native silk fibers, with hopes of ultimately reproducing the process artificially. McKi...

Tarantulas produce silk from their feet

...ts, a discovery with profound implications for why spiders began to spin silk in the first place. Adam Sum...owing them to better cling to surfaces. Until now, spiders were only known to spin silk from spinnerets located on their abdomen and to use the silk to form we...

Ground spider diversity studied in research project

...p;M University have led to the discovery of 25 new spiders in Brazos County and one species found for the fir...olf spiders, she said. A total of 989 species of spiders have been identified in Texas; 280 of these are found in Brazos County. Henderson set out pitfall ...

MIT creates 3-D scaffold for growing stem cells

...big. Getting cells to grow on them is like forcing spiders to build webs on skyscraper girders. Zhang's nanofiber scaffold, around 1,000 times smaller than the existing systems, is much closer in size to the extracellular matrices that living cells manufacture themselves. Adding motifs With the additio...

Fascinating spider silk

...s are largely unknown. The silk used by orb weaver spiders to spin the edges and spokes of their webs and to rappel away in the face of danger is made of two different proteins. The Munich team has now successfully used genetic engineering to produce one of the spider silk proteins of the European garden spi...

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