Tag: "collections" at biology news

Australian wins prestigious prize in biodiversity informatics

...mportance of the interplay between natural history collections data, visualization and analysis tools, and conservation decision-making. He has published in top-tier scientific journals, but at the same time he builds software applications that are intuitive and maximize the user experience for both scientists a...

Could fungal collection hold the key to new life-saving drugs?

...houses one of the world’s largest genetic resource collections of fungi, numbered at over 28,000 strains, including Fleming’s original penicillin producing isolate. They will be supplying the University of Strathclyde’s Institute for Drug Research (SIDR) with extracts from filamentous fungi which will be screen...

Antarctic icebergs -- Hotspots of ocean life

...orer.ucsd.edu ) and then stored the information in collections at SDSC for access and analysis by scientists now and in the future. Just getting to the icebergs was a challenge. First the scientists used satellite images to select two icebergs to study in detail. Then they sailed aboard the Antarctic researc...

Decoding protein structures helps illuminate cause of diabetes

...n depicted as static blobs, proteins are more like collections of balls and springs, constantly in motion, and their endless atomic twitching conveys information about their organization, Zanni says. Infrared laser beams can detect the minute vibrations and identify characteristic patterns to deduce protein str...

Scientists seek useful traits in wild cottons

...n College Station house one of three international collections of cottons. Another resides in France and another ...ders worldwide are evaluating specimens from these collections and exchanging germplasm in their efforts to improve the cotton genome. "These collections ...

Rare cell prevents rampant brain activity

...eir results show that a rarer cell type that links collections of pyramid cells ?called a Martinotti cell ?acts as a kind of safety device. When a Martinotti cell receives signals above a certain frequency, it responds by sending back inhibitory signals that moderate surrounding pyramid cells. Gilad Silberb...

Cure for cancer one step closer

...cancer is one step closer this week with the first collections of cancer tissue taking place at the new Wesley Re...nce of large, high quality cancer tissue and blood collections with clinical data is a major barrier to improving care of cancer patients. "Queensland research ...

Nanotechnology meets biology and DNA finds its groove

...y it, scientists generally are forced to work with collections of molecules floating in solution, and there is no easy way to precisely single out individual molecules for study. Now, however, scientists have developed a quick, inexpensive and efficient method to extract single DNA molecules and position them...

Unraveling where chimp and human brains diverge

...the UCLA team used data from DNA microarrays ?vast collections of tiny DNA spots -- to map the activity of virtually every gene in the genome simultaneously. By comparing gene activity in different areas of the brain, the team identified gene networks that correlated to specific brain regions. Then they compar...

LSU professor discovers new species

...tin. "Natural history museums and their invaluable collections are critical in that they allow scientists to examine known biodiversity in order to determine a species is new." He and Das examined specimens from a slew of museums around the world. Natural history collections, such as the more than 80,000 speci...

Researchers barcode DNA of Venice museum's vast fungi collection

...s. Furthermore, in our philosophy, natural science collections are public goods that everybody belonging to the scientific community should be able to take advantage of." ...

A human taste for rarity spells disaster for endangered species

... precipitate the anthropogenic Allee effect. Hobby collections of the sort Watson allegedly gave his life for top their list. Overhunting for food and feathers pushed the great auk (Pinguinus impennis)--a flightless, now-extinct bird that laid only one egg a year--to the brink of extinction. But it was likely sc...

The brain, traffic and nano-circuits -- e-Science takes on major challenges

...l atoms rather than the average behaviour of large collections of atoms. The NanoCMOS project will build a grid infrastructure and e-Science tools to enable circuit designers to share models that simulate nano-component behaviour and explore the implications for circuit design. It will help UK circuit designers...

Butterfly farming to help save rain forest

...utterfly farms and other institutions that exhibit collections of live butterflies. Each individual butterfly pupa that they can ship to one of these customers can be worth between 2 and 5 UK pounds. The creation of a sustainable butterfly farming business would help preserve the local rain forest in two ways. ...

Hantavirus found in African wood mouse

...chers will probably now screen their rodent biopsy collections for similar African hantaviruses based on the sequence information of the Sangassou virus," said ter Meulen. In addition to ter Meulen, authors of the article detailing the discovery include Boris Klempa, Detlev Kruger, Brita Auste and Helga Meisel,...

Researchers map of genetic variations implicated in disease

..., we are developing the necessary tools and sample collections to make a real difference to the study, diagnosis and, we hope, treatment of diseases such as TB, coronary heart disease, diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis." The MHC Haplotype Project is creating a public resource to assist the discovery of genetic ...

Removing egg from nest may help save endangered whooping crane

...here. But Parks Canada prefers that no future egg collections occur in Wood Buffalo National Park due to concerns that egg removals may reduce the productivity of the whooping crane population and that more generally, human intervention and disturbance should be minimized. Boyce's research found, however, that ...

A new link between stem cells and tumors

...s the focus on the events that create asymmetrical collections of molecules inside stem cells," Gonz�lez says. "This suggests new lines of investigation into the relationship between stem cells and tumors in other model organisms and humans." ...

Public collections of DNA and RNA sequence reach 100 gigabases

...a, MD, USA. Both of these databases were seeded by collections begun by far-sighted individuals: EMBL Bank by the collection of Kurt Stuber, then based at the University of Cologne in Germany, and GenBank by the collection of Walter Goad at LANL. The two nascent databases began collaborating very early on, an in...

Human embryonic stem cells have the potential to develop into eggs and sperm in the laboratory

... embryonic stem cells were allowed to develop into collections of cells called embryoid bodies. The embryoid bodies were tested to see which genes were active, or 'expressed', in them and it was found that within two weeks a very tiny proportion of cells in the embryoid bodies began to express some of the genes ...

1 2