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Tag: "tiny" at biology news

St. Jude study solves mystery of mammalian ears

...id—generates waves in the fluid, somewhat like the tiny waves made by a pebble thrown into a pond. This energy causes the hair cell cilia in both mammals and non-mammals to swing back and forth quickly in a steady rhythm. In mammals, the rod-shaped body of the outer hair cell contracts and then vibrates...

Common cancer gene sends death order to tiny killer

...f Molecular Cell. The research team identified a tiny bit of genetic code, a microRNA called miR-34a tha...e a number of studies have demonstrated that these tiny RNA molecules are frequently abnormal in cancer cells. "P53 is one of the most commonly mutated g...

Cells re-energize to come back from the brink of death

...es of events that kills the cell. Mitochondria are tiny structures that act as power plants to supply the cell with energy, but also hold the keys to the cells’ life and death. The process by which the membranes develop holes—mitochondrial outer membrane permeability (MOMP)—is often the “point of no...

Crammed with charged DNA, pressure rises inside virus

...self full of its own DNA. The virus, phi29, has a tiny motor that pumps its DNA into the capsid—outer shell—during the assembly process. The potential energy of the tightly coiled DNA may help phi29 inject its genetic material into the bacterial cells it infects. Now a team led by physicists at the Uni...

Dirty snow may warm Arctic as much as greenhouse gases

... “Dark soot can heat up quickly. It’s like placing tiny toaster ovens into the snow pack.” The study appears this week in the Journal of Geophysical Research. Dirty snow has had a significant impact on climate warming since the Industrial Revolution. In the past 200 years, the Earth has warmed about...

Brightening prospects of using fluorescent nanotubes in medical applications

...y, nanotubes are nature’s smallest candles. These tiny tubes are constructed from carbon atoms and they are so small that it takes about 100,000 laid side-by-side to span the width of a single human hair. In the last five years, scientists have discovered that some individual nanotubes are fluorescent. T...

Undergraduate research shows leaderless honeybee organizing

...ver the critical signals have short life-spans and tiny brains incapable of managing the colony the way a human village might be managed by a council of elders. Instead, critical strategic choices, such as the assessment that it is time to divide the colony and swarm, appear to be decided by the dynamics ...

Bacteria ferry nanoparticles into cells for early diagnosis, treatment

...lfed by its outer membrane, forming "vesicles," or tiny spheres that are drawn into the cell's interior. Once inside the cell, the bacteria dissolve the vesicle membrane and release the cargo. The method might be used to take images of diseased tissues by inserting a cargo of fluorescent molecules into...

Marine phytoplankton changes form to protect itself from different predators

...e they prefer to eat colonies of phytoplankton. A tiny single-celled organism that plays a key role in the carbon cycle of cold-water oceans may be a lot smarter than scientists had suspected. In a paper published June 11 in the online version of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, research...

Researchers demonstrate way to control tree height

... smallest of them could be difficult to even find, tiny little “shrublets” among the flowers in the field site. The manipulation of height growth was achieved by insertion of certain genes, mostly taken from the model plant Arabidopsis, which inhibited the action of a class of plant-specific hormones k...

3-D ultrasound scanner provides in-depth view of the brain

...gans during endoscopic surgeries performed through tiny "keyhole" incisions about 3 centimeters in diameter (http://www.pratt.duke.edu/news/"id=417). To make the probe more suitable for brain scanning, the researchers shrunk it even further, to fit through a 10 millimeter hole in the skull. "The earli...

Surprising origin of cell's internal highways

...er to hold its shape and divide, originated from a tiny structure near the nucleus, called the centrosome. Now, researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center reveal a surprising new origin for these cellular "highways." In the June issue of Developmental Cell, Irina Kaverina, Ph.D., and colleagues...

Early exposure to indoor fungus molecules may protect infants against future allergies

...fants exposed to low levels. Fungal glucans are tiny molecules that scientists believe cause respiratory symptoms in adults. Crawling infants are often exposed to these molecules when they disturb dust on carpet or floors in their homes. Study lead author and environmental health scientist Yulia Ios...

Puzzling plankton yield secrets to role in evolution/global photosynthesis

The analysis of DNA sequences from tiny green algae have provided new insights into the my...ning enzymes as one of the tricks to maintain such tiny cells. There are many mechanisms that can account for species formation in photosynthetic phytoplan...

Mice with a migraine show signs of brain damage

...vidence that the headaches may also be acting like tiny transient strokes, leaving parts of the brain star...portant connections known as dendritic spines ?the tiny extensions of an individual neuron’s body that usually number in the thousands within a synapse. Mic...

Technique monitors thousands of molecules simultaneously

... harnessing thousands of minuscule electrodes on a tiny computer chip that do chemical reactions and yield molecules that bind to receptor sites. Kevin Moeller, Ph.D., Washington University professor of chemistry in Arts & Sciences, is doing this so that the electrodes on the chip can be used to monit...

'Insulator' helps silence genes in dormant herpes virus

...use it to replicate. In this dormant state, only a tiny fragment of the virus genome ?a single gene called the Latency-Associated Transcript gene (LAT) ?remains active. Scientists have long puzzled over the mechanism used to keep this small region of the genome going while nearby genes remain quiescent. ...

Newborn neurons like to hang with the 'in' crowd

... Toni. However, as the new neurons matured, the tiny tips filled out and started to monopolize the synaptic connections. "That's what we believe is the crux of the study: the survival of new neurons may depend on the ability to compete out the older existing neurons," says Gage. Earlier studies had sho...

Students invent protective pouch to enhance cell therapy

...ents, where the mesh would hold them in place. The tiny openings in the mesh, each about 250 microns in diameter, would allow blood to pass through to nourish the cells and disperse helpful proteins. But the openings are too small to allow the microcapsules to escape. In lab tests using latex tubing t...

Healthy coral reefs hit hard by warmer temperatures

...uilt from the calcium carbonate secretions of each tiny coral, or polyp. While polyps provide the framework, coral's vivid hues come from symbiotic single-celled algae that live in the polyps. The algae supply much of the food coral need to survive. When disease or stressful environmental conditions st...

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