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Tag: "critical" at biology news

Census of Marine Life explorers surprised by diversity, density of Arctic creatures

...part. Because the Southern Ocean appears to be so critical to the biology of the global ocean system, scientists are eager to understand how continued climate change, if realized, will affect it and the other oceans in turn. For example, the Larsen B ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula collapsed in early 2...

Understanding how bacteria communicate may help scientists prevent disease

...ulence, by a bacteria colony once it has reached a critical size. The Powe award provides seed money of $5,00...dy, some bacteria need a quorum, the presence of a critical number of individuals, before they can engage in particular activities. Typically these are activiti...

Unique library of plant genes germinates, takes root at UNC

..."Creating useful and accessible tools like this is critical to the field. Even if researchers have access to all the genomic data and all the methods necessary to analyze it, it takes a lot of human and computer effort to put those two things together in one user-friendly package like Phytome." Phytome went ...

Researchers reveal secret of key protein in brain and heart function

...iversity biologists have solved the structure of a critical piece of synapse-associated protein 97 (SAP97) fou... sort of tether, grabbing proteins inside the cell critical to nerve signaling and keeping them close to N-methyl-D-asparate (NMDA) receptors at the cell surfac...

Natural tumor suppressor in body discovered by UCSD medical researchers

...een initiated." Scientists have known that Akt is critical in regulating cell growth and death, and that it is linked to some of the most common human cancers. Although one group of scientists discovered a molecule called PTEN*, which prevents activation of Akt, no one to date had determined how to directly ...

Cancer related gene p53 not regulated as indicated by previous tissue culture research

...amage is too severe for the breaks to be repaired, critical backup protection, also governed by the p53 tumor suppressor protein, kicks in. It initiates the process of programmed cell death, or apoptosis, which directs the cell to commit suicide, permanently removing the damaged DNA from the organism. Since ...

Map of life on Earth could be used on Mars

...e transfer. Modular metabolic genes, which are not critical for cell production, account for most lateral gene transfers between microbes. "There is a lot we're beginning to understand in terms of bacterial evolution that is still not quite clear, " Blank said. "What we're trying to resolve is the evolutiona...

Critical step traced in anthrax infection

...he researchers demonstrated that the phi-clamp was critical to infection by mutating the region and thereby blocking translocation of the toxin proteins. These recent experimental results extend and explain a 1999 discovery by the Collier lab identifying a set of mutations in protective antigen that prevent ...

Stem cell treatment improves mobility after spinal cord injury

...the biological insulation for nerve fibers that is critical for maintenance of electrical conduction in the central nervous system. When myelin is stripped away through disease or injury, sensory and motor deficiencies result and, in some cases, paralysis can occur. The researchers injected these cells into ...

The making and breaking of microtubules

Microtubules are active protein polymers critical to the structure and function of cells and the process of cell division. In a living cell their growing ends constantly elongate and retreat in a thrashing frenzy of polymerization and depolymerization, like the writhing snakes of Medusa's hair. Know...

Open Access journals get impressive impact factors

...m 1.9 to 3.21, and the journal is now third in the critical care medicine field having leap-frogged the competitor title Intensive Care Medicine, the official journal of the major European society. Breast Cancer Research also increased it's impact factor from 2.93 to 2.98 and remains the second highest rankin...

Fat's fate depends on its source

...archers. Old fat stores alone failed to set those critical metabolic pathways in motion, they found. The find...xhibited a marked decline in the activity of genes critical for the metabolism of glucose, fatty acids, and cholesterol. Those genes are normally targeted by PP...

'Bionic' arm gives amputee sense of touch

...m 1.9 to 3.21, and the journal is now third in the critical care medicine field having leap-frogged the competitor title Intensive Care Medicine, the official journal of the major European society. Breast Cancer Research also increased it's impact factor from 2.93 to 2.98 and remains the second highest rankin...

Researchers make headway in mystery of migraines

...m pump maintains a gradient of potassium, which is critical for the propagation of electrical signals along nerve cells. Like an air conditioner in the heat of summer, the sodium pump is a massive energy hog, consuming around 30% of the energy produced by the cell in order to perform this vital cellular proce...

Researchers discover stem cell 'guide' that may be key for targeting neural stem cell treatments

...are proteins found in a cell's membrane and play a critical role in transferring signals from outside of a cell to the molecular machinery within the cell. GPCRs are the largest family of proteins that serve as drug targets. It has been estimated that at least 40 percent of all medicines on the market act on ...

Study: Well-known protein helps stem cells become secretory cells

...cells become specialized for secretion, which is a critical ability of certain glands and cell types in organisms from insects to humans. The researchers discovered that a protein called CrebA single-handedly controls the entire set of events leading to secretion in the fruit fly's salivary gland and epiderm...

Researchers develop promising new gene network analysis method

...ew tool for tracing human gene connections, a task critical for understanding and treating cancer and other diseases. Results appeared this week in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "Genes influence one another in many intricate ways," said Leon Cooper, professor of p...

Specialized immune-system B cells play double-barreled role

...teristics of the immune regulatory process will be critical to learning to successfully manipulate it with vaccines." ...

Bioinformatics reveals new gene regulation system

...onucleotides used to build DNA. This conversion is critical for duplicating a bacterium's entire genome before it divides to reproduce. The search revealed a conserved palindromic sequence occurring upstream of many ribonucleotide reductase (Nrd) genes. A genetic palindrome is a sequence of nucleotides on on...

Researchers discover mechanism for multiplying adult stem cells

...cause this process is reversible, after you have a critical mass of these cells, you can then place them back into the person where they would grow into healthy tissue." "This could be very beneficial for burn victims," Jaenisch adds. Researchers in his lab are also exploring whether activating Oct4 in soma...

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