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Tag: "changing" at biology news

Natural selection at single gene demonstrated

...ere's good evidence that there's natural selection changing the behavior of the plants," Toomajian said. Why the variants were selected remains unclear, though some have suggested that the plant evolved under pressure from the spread of agriculture. Toomajian's group identified the gene variants through a c...

MIT: Oceans are a major gene swap-meet for plankton

...e how photosynthesizing microbes manage to exploit changing conditions such as altered light, temperature and nutrients. The work will be reported in two articles in the March 24 issue of Science. As a result of the new findings, "we are beginning to get a picture of gene diversity and gene flow in the mos...

Genome sequencing is for ecologists, too

...nt for adaptation and how populations survive in a changing world." Colbourne is a founding member of the Daphnia Genomics Consortium and the genomics director of the Center for Genomics and Bioinformatics at IU Bloomington. The U.S. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation funded the Daphn...

Warming trend may contribute to malaria's rise

...her factors such as drug and pesticide resistance, changing land use patterns and human migration also may play roles, climate change cannot be ruled out. "Our results do not mean that temperature is the only or the main factor driving the increase in malaria, but that it is one of many factors that should b...

Growing crops to cope with climate change

...rieties of crop that will be able to cope with the changing world climate. Researchers funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) at the John Innes Centre in Norwich have identified the gene in barley that controls how the plant responds to seasonal changes in the length of t...

Attractive birds more immune against bird flu

...re something in the environment that is constantly changing and can govern the genetics of appearance and health, leading, instead, to diversity? "More and more evidence indicates that the most changeable part of the environment consists of parasites, bacteria and viruses. All of these, especially viruses, ...

Mouse to man: The story of chromosomes

...ase pairs (the chemicals that make up DNA), but by changing chunks of genome," said Lupski. The sequencing of chromosome 17 and mouse chromosome 11 was an international effort involving researchers from around the globe. ...

On a fly's wing, scientists tally evolution's winners and losses

...ase pairs (the chemicals that make up DNA), but by changing chunks of genome," said Lupski. The sequencing of chromosome 17 and mouse chromosome 11 was an international effort involving researchers from around the globe. ...

Why nerve cells work faster than the theory allows

... mechanism appears to help the cells transmit fast changing signals and suppress slow signals. Every living ...n the other hand, helps the cells to transmit fast changing signals, even with high precision. According to the Hodgkin-Huxley model, the cells would lack the a...

U of MN researchers develop way to visualize synchronized interactions of nerve cells in the brain

...oulos used MEG data from 248 sensors to detect the changing interactions over time. The measurements they recorded represent the workings of tens of thousands of brain cells. The large amount of data recorded from each sensor was analyzed over time to view how large groups of active brain cells operate and ...

Intimate kissing quadruples risk of meningitis in teenagers

... some study limitations, these findings imply that changing personal behaviours could reduce the risk of meningococcal disease in adolescence, say the authors. Although behaviour based health promotion messages might have a small role in reducing the risk of disease, such campaigns are unlikely to have a maj...

Climate change drives widespread amphibian extinctions

...equin frogs are disappearing in near lockstep with changing climate. According to the scientists, the Earth's rising temperatures enhance cloud cover on tropical mountains, leading to cooler days and warmer nights, both of which favor the chytrid fungus. The organism grows and reproduces best at temperatures ...

Outsmarting the smartie bug

...psule forms a sugary coat around the bacterium and changing the structure of the capsule can help it to fool our immune defence systems ?like a Smartie changing its colour. "The bug has a polysaccharide coat which can take any one of 90 different forms, known ...

Study reveals classic symbiotic relationship between ants, bacteria

...rs - evidence that the ants are capable of rapidly changing to maintain their bacterial residents. "These two species of ants are very difficult to differentiate other than through molecular analysis," says Currie. "There are almost no morphological, or physical, differences between the two. However, the c...

Most human-chimp differences due to gene regulation ?not genes

...an indication of powerful incentives to adapt to a changing environment. Of the 1,056 genes from all four species, 60 percent had fairly consistent expression levels across all four species. "The expression levels of these genes seem to have remained constant for about 70 million years," the authors wrote, "...

More evidence mammals, fruit flies share make-up on function of biological clocks

... which helps light reset the biological clock with changing seasons, or in jet lag-style experiments (in which light is manipulated to mimic the experience of traveling over multiple time zones) in the lab. In mammals, however, Cry assists in the 24-hour rhythmic expression of clock genes and has nothing to d...

Enzyme crystal structure reveals 'unexpected' genome repair functions

...(TFIIH) functional assembly complex, might play in changing conformations for TFIIH's alternate roles in either transcription or DNA repair. The XPB crystal structures developed by the researchers identified unexpected functional domains for XPB that, according to the study, help "address key questions abou...

Convergent evolution of molecules in electric fish

..."Functionally important parts of this molecule are changing in order to change the electrical discharge in the fish--changes that would be detrimental in a human muscle," says Zakon. Looking at the convergent evolution of sodium channels in these fish helps neurobiologists identify important parts of these ...

Pesticides in the nation's streams and ground water

...ert Gilliom, however, "Pesticide use is constantly changing in response to such factors as regulations and market forces and findings from this decade-long study need to be examined in relation to changes in use during and after the study. For example, levels of the herbicide alachlor declined in streams in t...

Secrets of the sea yield stronger artificial bone

...is more bone than artificial, meaning it adapts to changing physiological conditions and meshes with surrounding tissue over time. In contrast, today's artificial joints are made from metal alloys and ceramics that often trigger inflammation and immune responses, or may require corrective surgery after only a...

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