Tag: "nature" at biology news

Research identifies protein that signals flowering in squash plants

...ith other factors to induce flowering. The precise nature of the florigenic signal has eluded plant biologis...hes). The strength of this research lies in the nature of the experimental system utilized. The authors chose Cucurbita squash species because reliable met...

Modeling the restless brain

...r when a person is at rest, doing nothing. The nature of these "resting state fluctuations" is an active topic of research in cognitive neuroscience, with their mysterious origin prompting one prominent researcher to label them the "brain's dark energy," Sporns said. As yet, no one knows why these fluct...

A new plant-bacterial symbiotic mechanism promising for crop applications

...sms by triggering nodulation. The discovery of the nature of the signal molecule itself, which remains to be fully determined, brings a glimpse of future agricultural applications. Many plants live in symbiosis with bacteria, but the mechanisms are known for only a small number of these interactions. Th...

Newly found sensing system enables certain bacteria to resist human immune defenses

...am-negative, with the primary difference being the nature of the bacterial cell wall. Little is known about how gram-positive bacteria—such as those that can lead to food poisoning, skin disorders and toxic shock—avoid being killed by AMPs. AMPs are made by virtually all groups of organisms, including amphi...

Now, self-healing materials can mimic human skin, healing again and again

...ials, and posted on its Web site. “The vascular nature of this new supply system means minor damage to the same location can be healed repeatedly,” said Sottos, who also is a researcher at the university’s Beckman Institute. In the researchers’ original approach, self-healing materials consisted of a m...

Massive herds of animals found to still exist in Southern Sudan

...uld I have imagined that this kind of abundance in nature existed in a region after 25 years of civil war, virtually unknown to the world at large.” “This is a homecoming for the Wildlife Conservation Society, which conducted the last wildlife surveys of white-eared kob in the region some 25 years ago bef...

MU researchers to study the status of black bears in Missouri

...us because we need to have a better idea about the nature of the bear population in Missouri,” Hamilton said. “We get lots of questions from citizens and media this time of year because bears are active and get into trouble, and we try to reassure the public that we are prepared to handle nuisance bears and...

Plastic that grows on trees

... they have directly converted sugars ubiquitous in nature to an alternative source for those products that m...simpler to start with the fructose, less common in nature than glucose. Zhang and his team, working with a high-throughput reactor capable of testing 96 me...

Exploring the dark matter of the genome

..."junk." Like dark matter in the universe, the true nature of heterochromatin was unknown. Now members of the Drosophila Heterochromatin Genome Project (DHGP), headed by Gary Karpen of the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, are approaching a complete assembly, mapping, and functi...

Puzzling plankton yield secrets to role in evolution/global photosynthesis

...ed perspective, we are learning some of the tricks nature has employed to ‘engineer?an extremely small eukaryote to thrive in nature—which may well find applications in bioengineering," said Palenik. "It was particularly interesting to see the predicted use of selenium-containing enzymes as one of the trick...

Technique monitors thousands of molecules simultaneously

...molecule is the key and the receptor the lock. The nature and shape of molecules that serve as keys tells about the binding requirements of the receptor. Traditionally, probing a receptor this way has been done by making a library of molecules, treating it with the receptor, washing away any excess receptor...

Role of noise in neurons

...g such thin axons is affected by the probabilistic nature of voltage-gated ion channels (channel noise). Channel noise destroys information in the AP, and they conclude that these effects are much larger than previously supposed and therefore must be taken into account in any future studies of neural coding...

Survival of the rarest: Fruit flies shed light on the evolution of behavior

...ure. "There's considerable genetic variation in nature and we haven't been able to explain why it persists, since natural selection ensures that only the best survive," says Sokolowski, who holds a Canada Research Chair in Genetics. "In some cases, individuals with characteristics that differ from the re...

Decoding protein structures helps illuminate cause of diabetes

...R for short), that takes advantage of the restless nature of molecules and atoms. Though often depicted as static blobs, proteins are more like collections of balls and springs, constantly in motion, and their endless atomic twitching conveys information about their organization, Zanni says. Infrared ...

In young mice, gregariousness seems to reside in the genes

...antity of the call are tightly associated with the nature of the interaction itself." As the mice neared sexual maturity, the genetic influence on social behavior ebbed and the animals became much more responsive to social cues such as gender, according to Lahvis. "As they get older, they take on the ...

Super-fermenting fungus genome sequenced

...itis is the most proficient microbial fermenter in nature of the five-carbon “wood sugar?xylose—abundant in hardwoods and agricultural leftovers, which represent a motherlode of bioenergy fodder. “Increasing the capacity of P. stipitis to ferment xylose and using this knowledge for improving xylose metab...

Penn researchers show how nanocylinders deliver medicine better than nanospheres

...s can help us understand how this shape evolved in nature and the advantages of using it for treating people." ...

Scientists learn the origin of rogue B cells

...tems to visualize complex phenomena, then to allow nature to give you the answers to your questions," says Casellas. Their new findings raise the question of how this knowledge might eventually help people with autoimmune disease. That question, says Casellas, is one that will take time to answer. "This ...

Female Antarctic seals give cold shoulder to local males

...ggest that female choice may be more widespread in nature than previously believed and that such strategies ...gests that female choice may be more widespread in nature than we previously thought." Studies of other species have shown links between genetic variation a...

ATR checkpoint-activating DNA structure

...The ability to precisely define and manipulate the nature of the checkpoint activating structure in an experimental system will enable us to control, quantitative and probe checkpoint signaling responses in unprecedented ways." Using Xenopus egg extracts as a cell-free system, the researchers found that ...

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