Tag: "acid" at biology news

Life detection instrument passes key test on road to Mars

..., a graduate student who has been working on amino acid detection with Mathies for five years and on the p...ls are 100 to 1,000 times more sensitive for amino acid detection than the original life detection instrument flown on the Viking Landers in the 1970s. The...

Vitamin A's paradoxical role in influencing symmetry during embryonic development revealed

... his Salk Institute colleagues found that retinoic acid (vitamin A) is the signal that buffers the influen...t-right axes is coordinated by vitamin A. Retinoic acid exerts its influence at the stage when the embryonic stem cells enter the node region of the embryo ...

Critical step traced in anthrax infection

...hey identified the hydrophobic, or "greasy," amino acid phenylalanine in protective antigen's pore-forming domain. Seven of these amino acids project into the lumen of the pore and form a collection of greasy residues, nicknamed "the phi-clamp" by the scientists. Because the water-filled lumen of the memb...

Fat's fate depends on its source

...said. The findings suggest that products of fatty acid synthesis regulate glucose, lipid, and cholesterol metabolism by activating distinct pools of PPARa in the liver. Further study is required to elucidate the mechanism by which nutrient sensors in the body distinguish between different sources of fat,...

Recombinant DNA technology may enable oral, rather than injectable, delivery of protein drugs

... digestive enzymes and may be destroyed by stomach acid before they can be absorbed." To sidestep the difficulty of getting these large protein drugs through the GI tract intact, pharmaceutical scientists have looked at other ways to deliver protein-based drugs-such as via needle-free injections or throug...

Proteomics brings researchers closer to understanding microbes that produce acid mine drainage

...ool's gold." In the process, they produce sulfuric acid that leaches more iron from the pyrite and release...m appears to be a key protein in the production of acid mine drainage. The protein, a cytochrome, oxidizes iron, and thus controls the rate of production of...

Deep thinking: Scientists sequence a cold-loving marine microbe

...triking distinctions in C. psychrerythraea's amino acid composition, highlighting differences unique to the cold-loving organism. Together, these analyses offer a picture of evolution in action, as C. psychrerythraea uses subtle tweaks in common bacterial biology to adapt to its chilly environs. For inst...

ORNL, UC Berkeley unravel real-world clues to Earth's mysteries

...Policy and Management, has studied this particular acid mine drainage community for several years. Meanwhi...d heterogeneity of the communities. "However, the acid mine drainage microbial colony is an excellent starting point because it is a real-life natural worl...

Scripps research scientists identify infertility molecule

...or molecule -- a protein called a lysophosphatidic acid (LPA) receptor that can be found on the surfaces o...ted prostaglandin levels. Prostaglandin is a fatty acid found in mammals that is essential for normal implantation. Manipulating parts of LPA signaling may ...

Scripps research scientists solve structure of a critical innate immune system protein

...epeats that contain a high percentage of the amino acid leucine. This fact was important to Wilson and his colleagues because the leucine-rich proteins are often decorated with sugars (glycans), and fall into the class of biological molecules known as "glycoproteins." "Amazingly there is still this preva...

Newly discovered genetic disease sheds light on body's water balance

...on where different substitutions in a single amino acid cause two different, opposite genetic disorders. ...xample in which mutations affecting the same amino acid cause two different genetic diseases," the UCSF researchers write. While only two infants so far ha...

Novel compounds show promise as safer, more potent insecticides

...d Flubendiamide, the first example of the phthalic acid diamides, a novel class of insecticides that activate the ryanodine receptor. The insecticide is highly effective against many different species of caterpillars, says Masanori Tohnishi, a senior research scientist at Nihon Nohyaku. In early tests, th...

Scientists find microRNAs regulate plant development

The plant hormone indole-3-acetic acid (IAA), commonly referred to as auxin, plays a major role in regulating plant growth and development. Auxin influences development by affecting the expression of numerous genes that control the processes of cell division and cell expansion in specific...

Study shows how retinoic acid enters a cell's nucleus

... stumped scientists for many years: exactly how an acid derived from vitamin A enters a cell's nucleus, wh... the cancer-fighting vitamin A derivative retinoic acid (RA) gains entry into a cell's nucleus. When vitamin A enters a cell's cytoplasm (the portion that ...

Gene expands malaria's invasion options

...ing one called W2mef - can invade using the sialic acid receptors, but also have the ability to switch to ...duced lines of the W2mef parasite that used sialic acid for invasion, and lines that could invade without it. Then they compared the differences in gene act...

Pinpointing the cause of a neurodegenerative disorder

...n unusually long repetitive stretches of the amino acid glutamine. The new findings, which are published in the August 26, 2005, issue of the journal Cell, provide a molecular explanation for Ataxin-1's assault on cerebellar Purkinje cells. The findings should help to understand a range of diseases, in...

Redesigned protein accelerates blood clotting

...research, Fay's team had identified a single amino acid (out of the more than 2,300 building blocks making...ry in the current study by swapping out a glutamic acid naturally occurring at a specific point in a calcium binding site on factor VIII with 19 different a...

Pinpointing a culprit molecule in Alzheimer's disease

...es two types of amyloid beta peptide--one 40 amino acid units long (Ab40) and one 42 units long (Ab42). Circumstantial evidence has suggested that Ab42 is the "stickier" of the two forms, and underlies the pathology of the disease. Now, researchers led by Eileen McGowan and Todd Golde of the Mayo Clinic ...

Insulin pulses keep the liver lean

... acutely reduce the activity of fat-building fatty acid synthase (FAS) in the liver by activating a second...eculate that CEACAM1-dependent inhibition of fatty acid synthesis might be compromised as a consequence or even a cause of the insulin-resistant state," wro...

Fruit fly studies open new window on cancer research

...ncil (BBSRC), discovered that this family of amino acid transporters are very powerful growth promoters. W...lopment and the cells grew excessively. The amino acid transporters appear to be responsive to nutrients on the surface of the cell and do not need to brin...

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