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Tag: "explanation" at biology news

Study Unlocks Insects?Secret for Love in the Dark

...c results in animals, scientists don't yet have an explanation for this counterintuitive response. Understanding inflammation requires knowing not just which genes are involved, but how those genes interact with each other. To investigate this, the group turned to a knowledge base compiled by Ingenuity Systems,...

Older female fish prefer imperfect male mates, study finds

...uld pass on that resilience to offspring. Another explanation would be that the visual system "develops an internal prototype of an object that is based on an average of all the male fish [the females] have seen," Morris said. "Therefore, any fish they see that is closest to this prototype is preferred." The sa...

Plant defenses prompt bacterial countermeasure in the form of 'island' DNA excision

...host bean plant. These findings offer a molecular explanation for how exposure to plant resistance mechanisms can directly drive the evolution of new virulent forms of a bacterial pathogen. ...

Gene Expression in the Aging Brain

...e lineages diverged about 5 million years ago. The explanation for this difference is unknown, but the finding highlights the fact that significant changes in gene expression patterns, and thus changes in many effects of the aging process, can accumulate over relatively short stretches of evolutionary time. The...

Navigating the brain for sense of direction as paradigm for higher cognitive functions

...e lineages diverged about 5 million years ago. The explanation for this difference is unknown, but the finding highlights the fact that significant changes in gene expression patterns, and thus changes in many effects of the aging process, can accumulate over relatively short stretches of evolutionary time. The...

Carnegie Mellon scientists create PNA molecule with potential to build nanodevices

...e lineages diverged about 5 million years ago. The explanation for this difference is unknown, but the finding highlights the fact that significant changes in gene expression patterns, and thus changes in many effects of the aging process, can accumulate over relatively short stretches of evolutionary time. The...

Discovering the first steps in transcription-coupled repair

...ate place -- without removing the RNAPII. The best explanation is that TFIIH causes a conformational change, a "remodeling" of the RNAPII, which lifts the clamp module out of the way. This finding is especially significant because XPB and XPD, the other two proteins associated with xeroderma pigmentosum that ca...

Brainstem blocks pain to protect key behaviors

...such as morphine," said Mason, "but we had no good explanation of what their natural role might be." Their prime location -- in the brain stem, the "Gold Coast of neuroanatomical property" -- suggests that they "must do something crucial." This study indicates that they "protect against distraction. They give ...

Hepatitis B accounts for 40 percent of 'missing' Asian women

...he Journal of Political Economy, Oster proposes an explanation for some of the observed over-representation of males: the hepatitis B virus. She presents new evidence, consistent with existing scientific literature, that carriers of the hepatitis B virus are 1.5 times more likely to have a male child. This evide...

Chlamydia parasite lives off our fat

..., lipid droplet co-option also suggests a possible explanation for the association between chlamydial infections and heart disease. ...

Getting old? Slowing down? Blame inefficient mitochondria

...is represents a 50% loss in efficiency. "The best explanation for this loss of efficiency is that the mitochondria become leaky as they get old. Protons leak back into the mitochondria without making ATP, and so reduce the coupling between oxygen use and ATP production," says lead author David Marcinek, who wor...

New evidence questions the simple link between prion proteins and madcow disease

...itute Jupiter, Florida, suggests that one possible explanation that keeps with the prion hypothesis is that infection occurs as PrPs are absorbed in the mouth, rather than in the gut. Dr Jeffrey, however, is not convinced by this argument. "Were infection to be acquired from the mouth then the first tissues to ...

Boosting newborns' immune responses

...od also has high levels of adenosine, providing an explanation for newborns' altered immune response: adenosine alters the physiology of white cells to suppress production of TNF-alpha (but not of IL-6) when TLRs are stimulated. When Levy's team used antagonists to inhibit adenosine's activity, newborns' white ...

Cell barrier shows why bird flu not so easily spread among humans

... or other hosts. "Our findings provide a rational explanation for why H5N1 viruses rarely infect and spread from human to human, although they can replicate efficiently in the lungs," the authors of the study write in the Nature report. By looking at human tissues, Kawaoka's group noted that the cells in the ...

Diverse tropical forests defy metabolic ecology models

...s complexity defies simple characterization '" its explanation requires consideration of the diversity of environmental conditions and species traits in tropical forests, and complex feedbacks and interactions among species and resources. Muller-Landau and Condit are currently working on mechanistic models that ...

Sweet 'water taste' paradoxically predicts sweet taste inhibitors

...nera. "It is rare to find so complete a molecular explanation for a complex perceptual phenomenon. We can now use sweet water taste as a predictor for potential sweet inhibitors." Sweet inhibitors are used by the food industry to counteract the undesirable high sweetness that results from replacing fats with ...

How nerve cells stay in shape

...skeleton offered the first evidence for a possible explanation for the observed synapse changes. Actin is a central protein in the cell's skeleton, which keeps synapses in shape. Formless synapses in Staufen2-deficient nerve cells have significantly fewer actin fibres than normal synapses. The mRNA for actin is ...

Sea coral's trick helps scientists tag proteins

... Konstantin Lukyanov said. "We still have no clear explanation for why Dendra differs from other Kaede-like fluorescent proteins." Sergey Lukyanov pointed out that the ultraviolet light required to activate many PAFPs can be toxic to cells, and can dramatically alter their biochemistry. Further, the equipment n...

Scientists discover basic defect in cystic fibrosis airway glands

...tion in cystic fibrosis airway glands. The second explanation is that the glands still secrete fluid via non-CFTR pathways, but the fluid is reabsorbed by other channels. In fact, it has been proposed that one of CFTR's functions is to inhibit the activity of a channel called the epithelial Na+ channel (ENaC)....

Animal brains 'hard-wired' to recognize predator's foot movements, Queen's study suggests

...ion, he adds. "Our finding might also provide an explanation for seemingly irrational phobias towards animals that don't fit the ballistic movement pattern of a proposed 'life detector'," he says. "Snakes, insects and spiders, or birds can generate pathological reactions not observed in response to 'normal' an...

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