Tag: "convert" at biology news

Rice scientists make first nanoscale pH meter

Using unique nanoparticles that convert laser light into useful information, Rice University scientists have created the world's first nano-sized pH meter. The discovery, which appears online this week in the journal Nano Letters, presents biologists with the first potential means of meas...

Alaska seal pup diet may hold key to decline of population

...d protein, Polasek said. And fat is the easiest to convert to energy and blubber. Herring is one potential source of fat for harbor seals, she said. After weaning, pups must learn to effectively fish and accumulate sufficient fat stores for the winter, but changes observed in the distribution, composition or...

Hopkins researchers discover genetic switch that turns off an oxygen-poor cell's combustion engine

... because a cancer cell's survival depends on it to convert glucose to lactic acid through glycolysis even in the presence of ample oxygen. Disruption of the switch by a drug may cause cancer cells to pollute themselves with toxic oxygen molecules and undergo apoptosis or cell death. The new finding, made by...

Legume compounds may help cancer treatment

...and provide the plant with useable nitrogen it can convert into proteins. CILR Chief Investigator Professor Chris Parish's group, based at ANU's John Curtin School of Medical Research, developed the bioassay used to identify the compounds as potential therapeutic agents. "We have identified several compou...

How sperm crack the whip

...onent of the mechanism spermatozoa use to abruptly convert their tail motion from a steady swimming undulation to the whip-cracking snap that thrusts them into an egg. The finding opens a new research pathway that the researchers said could help scientists both recognize new forms of male infertility and des...

Sea coral's trick helps scientists tag proteins

...ing spectral changes in some proteins, which could convert from dark to light or change colors. Later, the Russian scientist and his colleagues discovered that the GFP-like protein they isolated from Dendronephthya had this capacity to change color, but it was too big to be useful for many research applicati...

Earth Rx: A microbial biotechnology prescription for global environmental health

...tifically, it might be easiest to let the microbes convert the energy is organic wastes directly to electricity. However, they also can generate useful fuels, such as methane and hydrogen, and we are pursuing research on all of these renewable-energy forms." Rittmann believes the key to achieving success...

Study in Science holds promise for a new approach to drug therapy

...khorse GPCRs are a part of a process where cells convert one kind of signal received on their surfaces into another set of signals inside them. Proteins called receptors are built into the outer cell surfaces and designed to react with a single, specific signaling molecule (a ligand). When a signaling mole...

Nano machine switches between biological and silicon worlds

...to rotating or linear mechanical energy. Or it can convert mechanical action into an electrical signal. It works both ways. "The light switch, the button that makes a retractable pen, all these are actuators, and by developing a molecular switch we've created a tiny actuator that could be used in an equall...

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

...il as "the smallest photosynthetic machine. It can convert the sun's energy into food through photosynthesis using only 1,700 genes, something the human body cannot do with 30,000 genes. In fact, despite all of our technological ingenuity, we cannot even mimic this process." Chisholm, who is co-director of ...

'Accelerated evolution' converts RNA enzyme to DNA enzyme in vitro

...he use of in vitro evolution provides the means to convert a ribozyme to a corresponding deoxyribozyme rapidly," Joyce said. "In the laboratory these procedures allow us to carry out many generations of test tube evolution. The resulting molecules have interesting catalytic properties, they teach us somethin...

Tiny polyps gorge themselves to survive coral bleaching

...ome within its cells for the algae while the algae convert sunlight into energy for the polyp. Grottoli said that when the temperature of the waters around a reef exceeds that upper limit and stays there for more than two weeks or so, it triggers a bleaching event. Once that happens, the symbiotic algae an...

Microbes convert 'Styrofoam? into biodegradable plastic

...rials by heating them in the absence of oxygen, to convert polystyrene ?the key component of many disposable ...roxyalkanoates). The process might also be used to convert other types of discarded plastics into PHA, according to O’Connor. PHA has numerous uses in medicin...

Plants give pests sock in the gut

...lization when they eat the enzyme. They just can't convert what they eat into body mass." Luthe presented the findings at the annual meeting of the American Chemical Society today (March 30) in Atlanta. With the help of antibodies specific to the enzyme, the researchers were able to determine that Mir1-CP...

New book on rain forests, slash-and-burn agriculture

...d their families and by other interests seeking to convert forests to agriculture. The loss of the forests threatens Earth's biodiversity and climate. The new book also identifies the costs and benefits of alternative uses of forests and cleared land in several benchmark sites throughout the developing worl...

Poison + water = hydrogen. New microbial genome shows how

...s is one of the fastest-growing microbes that can convert water and carbon monoxide to hydrogen," remarks TIGR evolutionary biologist Jonathan Eisen, senior author of the PLoS Genetics study. "So if you're interested in making clean fuels, this microbe makes an excellent starting point." In sequencing the...

Odd energy mechanism in bacteria analyzed

...d is maintained by photosynthesis, in which plants convert sunlight into biological energy through a process that requires chlorophyll. In the oceans, SAR11 is a partner in this process, recycling organic carbon and producing the nutrients needed for the algae that produce about half of the oxygen that enter...

Storing carbon to combat global warming may cause other environmental problems, study suggests

...tares in the Southeast and Midwest might initially convert from non-irrigated croplands and pasture to forestry at the $100 price. Such economic incentives are provided under so-called "carbon trading exchanges" encouraged by the Kyoto Protocol and the European Union's Greenhouse Gas Emission Trading Scheme...

Cyberkinetics, Case to develop system to help restore extremity function

...t brain cell activity and external processors that convert these brain signals into a computer-mediated output under the person's own control. The sensor is a tiny silicon chip about the size of a baby aspirin with one hundred electrodes, each thinner than a human hair, that can detect the electrical activit...

Student scientists create living bacterial photographs

...agar growth media, these bacteria could be used to convert light images shined onto the bacteria into biochemical prints. To create the photographs, the Texas students used a unique light projector largely designed and built by Chevalier, a physics undergraduate. The device projects the pattern of light--l...

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