Tag: "excite" at biology news

Brain works more chaotically than previously thought

...ntire length of these extensions and, in this way, excite the neighbouring cells. The findings of the study ...y packed together here. So the axon could not only excite the actual receptor but also numerous other nerve cells." If this hypothesis is correct, the acc...

Fast-freeze snapshot yields new picture of nerve-muscle junction

When nerve cells excite muscle fibers to flex, getting synaptic proteins and components into the right place can mean the difference between feats of strength or lapses of drowsy lethargy. Several proteins that have been shown to be major players in synaptic transmission h...

Recombination protein dynamics observed with single monomer resolution

...ed ?to the molecule they want to study. Next, they excite the green dye with a laser. Some of the energy moves from the green dye to the red dye, depending upon the distance between them. The researchers then measure the brightness of the two dyes simultaneously. The changing ratio of the two intensities i...

'Micro-boxes' of water used to study single molecules

...hamber on a slide. A green laser is then used to excite the molecules in individual droplets, and the light emissions over several seconds are analyzed to count the molecules and observe other phenomena. The researchers use two sets of optical tweezers to move droplets together to fuse them and mix their ...

Cell phone emissions excite the brain cortex

Electromagnetic fields from cell phones excite the brain cortex adjacent to it, with potential implications for individuals with epilepsy, or other neurological conditions. This finding is published in Annals of Neurology, a journal by John Wiley & Sons. The article is also available online v...

Attacking cancer's sweet tooth is effective strategy against tumors

... a research scientist at Merck & Co. What may excite the growing band of researchers who are studying the Warburg effect, and cancer metabolism more generally, is the way the study resolves a long-standing debate about how and why cells switch to glycolysis in the first place. Warburg speculated that c...

Commonly used antidepressants may also affect human immune system

...tem to fight them -- also use serotonin to quickly excite a T-cell response. They discovered that these dendritic cells can rapidly secrete serotonin, which activates serotonin receptors on certain types of T-cells. "In addition to the physical contact, it surprised us to find that these immune cells also ...

Scientists show how thinking can harm brain cells

...transmitter. Excess glutamate, however, can overly excite neurons, causing damage and death ?a process called excitotoxicity. Some drugs developed for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease, for example, are designed to lower the production of glutamate or block its transmission to reduce excitotoxic injury. ...

Bitter or sweet? The same taste bud can tell the difference

...ething sweet or bitter is on the tongue. CCK might excite the bitter taste and at the same time inhibit the sweet taste, so the bitter message gets to the brain." Although the researchers did not examine how either taste affected individual cells (they plan to do that next), Herness thinks that CCK may ove...

Microscopic brain imaging in the palm of your hand

...eir combined energies total the energy required to excite the fluorescent-dye molecules used to mark the tissue. The technique gets rid of the background haze and reduces scattering, because molecules outside the area of interest are much less likely to absorb a pair of photons simultaneously and fluoresce ...

New tool reveals secrets of migrating cells

...ns of light, each photon half the energy needed to excite it, the dye can absorb them together and then fluoresce. The less energetic, long-wavelength photons will go deeper into the tissue, cause less damage and scatter less, Robey said, essentially illuminating slices through the tissue that can be sharpl...

Team Invents Device For Weighing Individual Molecules

...archers set up electronic circuitry to continually excite and monitor the frequency of the vibrating bar. Intermittently, a shutter is opened to expose the nanodevice to an atomic or molecular beam, in this case a very fine "spray" of xenon atoms or nitrogen molecules. Because the nanodevice is cooled, the ...

Researchers make surprise discovery that some neurons can transmit three signals at once

... a single cell -- it was a finding they knew would excite more than just neurons. Just as surprising, they report in the lead article of this month's Nature Neuroscience, is that by definition these three neurotransmitters are seemingly at odds with each other. One, glutamate, is a textbook excitatory neur...

After a time-shift, mixed signals from the circadian clock

...rotransmitter GABA, which the researchers found to excite the cells of the dorsal SCN while inhibiting neurons in the ventral SCN. Because GABA transmits information between the ventral and dorsal SCN, such differences in effect might influence, in complex ways, how the two groups of cells adapt to a shifte...

Revolutionary nanotechnology illuminates brain cells at work

...ch have the same tone," Okumoto continued. "If you excite one, it gives a characteristic tone. If you bring the second fork close to the first one, it will also start to give you a tone even though they do not touch. This is resonance energy transfer." FRET is used to track the form of proteins that specif...

Robot-based system developed at Carnegie Mellon detects life in Chile's Atacama desert

... "To avoid this problem, we designed our system to excite dyes with high intensity flashes of light. The camera only opens during those flashes, so we are able to capture a strong fluorescence signal during daytime exploration," said Shmuel Weinstein, project manager. During the mission, a remote science t...

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