Tag: "critical" at biology news

A gene's first 'kiss' sets off that affair known as puberty

...full force some 10 to 12 years later? "Puberty is critical to human development. And while there is a fairly good understanding of how the endocrine system regulates the hormones involved, just how and when the brain activates this process has been a great mystery. An appreciation of puberty's deep-seated ne...

Wisconsin scientists grow critical nerve cells

...bryonic stem cells to become spinal motor neurons, critical nervous system pathways that relay messages from t...consin-Madison, are important because they provide critical guideposts for scientists trying to repair damaged or diseased nervous systems. Motor neurons tran...

A new mechanism of regulating RNA degradation

...er postdoctoral fellow, Yoon Ki Kim, Ph.D., used a critical component of the NMD complex, Upf1, as bait in a molecular fishing expedition. With this approach, proteins that naturally interact with the bait will be pulled out of the pool of cellular proteins. They found that Upf1 grabbed onto Staufen1 (Stau1)...

FDA Approves Human Hookworm Vaccine for Phase I Safety Trials

...er postdoctoral fellow, Yoon Ki Kim, Ph.D., used a critical component of the NMD complex, Upf1, as bait in a molecular fishing expedition. With this approach, proteins that naturally interact with the bait will be pulled out of the pool of cellular proteins. They found that Upf1 grabbed onto Staufen1 (Stau1)...

Spleen may be source of versatile stem cells

... practically unnecessary organmay actually provide critical healing cells," says Faustman, anassociate professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.She adds, "This data also shows the kind of payback that can come fromstudies of lower animals like newts and sponges. Combining theknowledge of Hox11's role i...

Quantum Dots Research Leads to New Knowledge about Protein Binding in Plants

...t the growingpollen tube tip. This protein plays a critical role along with anotherprotein (chemocyanin) in guiding sperm-laden pollen tubes to the eggsfound in ovules. Applyingnanoparticles for imaging the protein localization revealed informationthat could not be observed previously by conventional imaging...

Enzyme, lost in most mammals, is shown to protect against UV-induced skin cancer

...ns of the two types ofdamage to tumor formation is critical for the development of therapiesthat could help prevent skin cancer. Moreover, CPDs and 6-4PPs haveparticular potential to cause lasting damage to mammalian cells becausephotolyases ?a class of enzymes capable of efficiently repairing theselesions ?h...

Novel technology detects human DNA mutations

...ous (i.e., one is mutant, one is normal) ?the most critical step in correlating the SNP with a disease or drug sensitivity.To do so, Nanosphere scientists employ a two-step process calledClearReadTM technology. This method sandwiches a target DNA SNP segment between two oligonucleotide sequences to greatly in...

New, automated tool successfully classifies and relates proteins in unprecedented way

...l, according to Murphy. Getting thisinformation is critical to foil a disease like cancer, where you mightwant to identify and disable part of a tumor cell's machinery needed toprocess proteins for cancer growth."Our tool represents a step forward because it is based on standardizedfeatures and not on feature...

Fox Chase Cancer Center scientists identify immune-system mutation

...ration process." Understanding the development of critical components of the immune system can contribute to medical advances in stimulating desirable immune responses and halting undesirable immune reactions, Kappes said. This understanding can further progress against various immune disorders, allergies an...

Neuronal 'traffic jam' marks early Alzheimer's disease

...ons that appears to prevent the normal movement of critical proteins to the communications centers of the nerv...uld accumulate more than others, enough to cross a critical threshold and tip the scale toward disease." Goldstein emphasized that any application of these fin...

Newly-discovered class of genes determines ?and restricts ?stem cell fate

...neration. The researchers found that Pax3, a gene critical in embryonic development of melanocytes ?cells that make and store the pigments in the skin and hair ?is also expressed in adult stem cells in the skin. "Our findings told us that a recapitulation of an embryonic program is occurring in resident ste...

Tiny particles could solve billion-dollar problem

...f lifting water to the surface. Nanotechnology is critical to the scheme because only a nanoscale catalyst will be efficient enough to provide the throughput needed to make the whole approach effective. Tests in Wong's lab have found that the gold-palladium nano-catalysts break TCE down about 100 times faste...

Research advances quest for HIV-1 vaccine

...I Sr. VP for Vaccine Research, "Elucidation of the critical features of 4E10 recognition of HIV-1 helps to define potential immunogens able to elicit 4E10-like antibodies. This is an excellent example of the tremendous potential for accelerating HIV vaccine design when scientists from multidisciplinary labora...

A much-needed shot in the arm for HIV vaccine development

...er, we will greatly accelerate progress toward the critical goalof developing a safe and effective HIV vaccine to help curb the globalHIV/AIDS pandemic.""Being from the continent worst hit by the HIV/AIDS epidemic that hasclaimed more than twenty million lives and wiped out decades ofdevelopment gains," said ...

Study Links Ebola Outbreaks To Animal Carcasses

...nservation organizations such as WCS are therefore critical to the early detection of the conditions that can lead to deadly health emergencies." ...

The secret lives of whales

... larger than other estimates. This information is critical to current discussions of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) because some argue that the recent surge in minke populations is unprecedented and is hampering the recovery of other whales, pointing to the need for resumed whaling. Yet the whale...

Mouse brain tumors mimic those in human genetic disorder

...signals that are produced early in life, which are critical for tumorformation and expansion," Gutmann explains.Optic pathway gliomas in humans are typically surrounded by bloodvessels and microglia, which are immune system cells in the brain. Butit was unclear whether the development of blood vessels and rec...

A bacterial genome reveals new targets to combat infectious disease

...about a million base pairs, and many metabolically critical genes have degraded through mutation to the point of uselessness. This phenomenon, called reductive evolution, is typical of long-term symbioses, as the two partners increasingly complement one another's biochemical activities. Slatko and colleagues...

Scientists rid stem cell culture of key animal cells

...blast growth factor 2 (FGF2) accomplishes the same critical role that feeder cells are thought to play: ensuring that the stem cells remain in their undifferentiated state and capable of proliferation. "We've got it down to the mechanism," Xu says. Moreover, Xu made the surprising discovery that the very mo...

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