Tag: "machinery" at biology news

A switch between life and death

... a connection between the signals and the cellular machinery that drives growth." Using sophisticated genetic techniques, Thompson and Cohen established that a small molecule, a microRNA called bantam, makes this link. Without bantam, tissues grow too slowly and remain smaller than normal. The amount of banta...

For Stanford scientists, RNAi gene therapy takes two steps forward, one step back

...hijack the cell's normal RNAi machinery. With that machinery otherwise engaged, it's not available to carry out its normal role in the cell. "One benefit of RNAi gene therapy is that it uses the body's own machinery, making it an effective approach," Kay said. "However, the detriment of RNAi gene therapy turn...

Synthetic molecule causes cancer cells to self-destruct

...sing the broken pathway, we can use the cells' own machinery to destroy themselves." To find the compound, called procaspase activating compound one (PAC-1), Hergenrother, with colleagues at the U. of I., Seoul National University, and the National Center for Toxicological Research, screened more than 20,000 ...

Dartmouth study finds that arsenic inhibits DNA repair

...r in cultured human cell models. "The DNA repair machinery normally protects us from DNA-damaging agents, such as those found in cigarette smoke," says Andrew. "The concern is that exposure to drinking water arsenic may exacerbate the harmful effects of smoking or other exposures." Andrew explains that in r...

Researchers map out networks that determine cell fate

...searchers to manipulate the cells' decision-making machinery by introducing different amounts of PU.1. When the researchers introduced low concentration of PU.1, they found that the cells activated both macrophage and neutrophil genes. "This showed for the first time how this mixed lineage pattern is set up...

Johns Hopkins lab scientists tame overactive CF protein

...ung damage. Cells have a built-in quality-control machinery called ERAD (endoplasmic reticulum-associated degradation), which chemically "marks" defective proteins for destruction and sends them to the cell's waste-disposal complex, called the proteasome. In people with CF, defects in genes for a protein call...

A case of mistaken molecular identity

...out, molecular mimicry can also upset the delicate machinery inside retinal cells. Levin and his team found that antibodies geared to attack T. cruzi also block rhodopsin, a molecule that converts light into electrical impulses sent to the brain. "Rhodopsin takes light and transforms it ?that's its function," ...

New organic substrate

...breing the wood To obtain the substrate the same machinery is used for defibreing wood to make paper but, in this case, the fibres obtained are much thicker and longer. Wood fibre for papermaking goes through two or three defibreing processes while FIBRALUR substrate is the result of a single defibration. ...

Protein receptor cools passion of 'kiss and run' nerve cells

...ed a specific molecular mechanism that targets the machinery that causes the fusion process and found that inst... that the beta-gamma subunit affects the molecular machinery that causes release of neurotransmitter -- the amino acid glutamate. "It's very fast," said Alford....

Tandem transcripts team together

...rocessed via the same standard eukaryotic splicing machinery that removes introns from RNA transcripts. Following a similar whole-genome survey of splicing events, Guigó's laboratory focused on the ENCODE regions, a set of DNA sequences, representing 1% of the genome, that have been chosen by a large research...

Scientists make first step towards 'holy grail' of crystallography

...is understanding because proteins, being the major machinery of living things, are often targets for drugs. To direct the proteins to become crystals, researchers use a substance called a nucleant, which does this by encouraging protein molecules to form a crystal lattice. The research published online in P...

New insight into machinery of immune cells' 'tentacles'

...rs have identified new molecular components of the machinery that regulates formation of the tentacle-like fila...ttack. The researchers said their findings of the machinery of formation of such "actin filaments" could offer targets for drugs to induce the immune system to ...

How sperm crack the whip

...ell. Such studies will enable exploration of sperm machinery from tail to head ?analyzing processes ranging from tail motility to the mechanism by which the sperm head delivers its genetic payload to the egg, he said. Such research could yield insight into some male infertility, said Clapham. Still-unidentif...

When good DNA goes bad

... aren't sure why, but we think that the DNA repair machinery may be involved in processing the Z-DNA structure differently in bacteria versus human cells." Since formation of Z-DNA is naturally occurring and can exist in the genome, the scientists next want to understand why cells can sometimes process the st...

Movement of chromosome in nucleus visualized

...associated with nucleus complexes of transcription machinery necessary for gene expression, while inactive genes are found at the periphery," Belmont said. "For the first time, we have been able to observe an active mechanism for directed long-range chromosome movements that depend directly or indirectly on ac...

Common enzyme is a key player in DNA repair

...f DNA--can stall the temperamental DNA replication machinery as it unwinds and copies the genome in dividing ce...posite the damaged partner, so the DNA replication machinery can finish duplicating the chromosome despite the damaged DNA. This trick is usually referred to as ...

Neuroscientists discover new cell type that may help brain maintain memories of smells

... Case investigators found that the same biological machinery that helps the olfactory brain to remember smells is identical to the machinery that enables other types of memories in the cortical brain region most susceptible to damage in this...

Molecule by molecule, new assay shows real-time gene activity

... of our knowledge on the workings of the molecular machinery involved in gene expression comes from experiments...scherichia coli chromosome. When lacZ's regulatory machinery allows the modified gene to be converted into a handful of protein molecules, these Tsr-Venus hybrid...

Tool developed to silence genes in specific tissues using RNAi

...of viral RNA as different, and sets in motion cell machinery that destroys the invading RNA. This involves cutting up the double-stranded RNA, separating it into single strands, and destroying other single-stranded RNA molecules that are complementary to those small RNA segments. Scientists quickly realized t...

Protein translation in sperm

...hase. They identify that mitochondrial translation machinery (as opposed to cytoplasmic) directs translation of nuclear-encoded genes in sperm, and that its inhibition leads to a marked decrease in sperm motility, actin polymerization, the acrosome reaction and in vitro fertilization rates. Thus, protein tra...

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