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Tag: "nature" at biology news

A 'dimmer switch' for genes

... fact," Graves reports, "the region's unstructured nature appears to be an essential requirement." NMR showed that phosphate addition to this unstructured region caused a gradual decline in DNA binding, gradually turning a gene off. "One thing we didn't get was why Ets-1 worked differently before and after...

UW scientists report a new method to speed bird flu vaccine production

...whose genes are manipulated to disarm its virulent nature - can be seeded into chicken eggs to generate the vaccine used in inoculations, which prepare the human immune system to recognize and defeat the wild viruses that spread among humans in an epidemic or pandemic. In their report, a team led by UW-Ma...

Scientists get first glimpse at how plants, most animals repair UV-damaged DNA

...ming, we can modulate this function and mimic what nature does," he said. "We want to understand why this timing is so perfect." Zhong conducted this study with graduate students Ya-Ting Kao and Chaitanya Saxena and research associate Lijuan Wang, all of Ohio State, and Aziz Sancar of the University of Nor...

Immune system has evolved to prevent autoimmune disease

...tem that is the first to simulate the hierarchical nature of the body's immune response. The model predicts that chronic infections may lead to autoimmune diseases, a scenario that has been proposed as a cause of some rheumatic diseases like arthritis. "There are as many as a 100 million unique antibodies ...

Most embryos produced during IVF do not result in live births

...oductive Sciences led the project. "Something in nature has decided that these implanted embryos are not viable," said Patrizio, who conducted the study with co-author George Kovalevsky, M.D. "We as practitioners in the reproductive clinic are in a paradoxical situation," Patrizio added. "There is pressu...

UW-Madison scientists zero in on drugs' sweet spots

...iations of sugars -- they're all over the place in nature -- and they are very important. This method allows us to rapidly scan the roles of these sugars in complex natural products." The simplification of the process to manipulate natural sugars could help make natural products more appealing to the pharm...

Birds and bats sow tropical seeds

...ndoned. Better land parcels get replanted. But if nature had her way, more than 90 percent of replanted species would be dispersed by birds, bats and primates. That's less and less the case today in tropical areas worldwide, leading to a destructive cycle of land fragmentation, habitat loss and -- even wit...

Environment, not genes, key in family relationships

...eractions and personality traits. Now, it appears, nature may play a larger role than nurture when it comes to family relationships between adolescents and their parents. Researchers from the University of Texas at Austin and George Washington University in Washington, D.C., used data on 674 families, each...

Forsyth scientists find three bacteria associated with oral cancer

...s these questions, we will begin to understand the nature of interactions between man and the bacteria we live with." ...

Hidden sponges determine coral reef's nutrient cycle

...er Scheffers. And that is valuable information for nature conservationists who want to preserve the coral re...y in this. Underwater camera To determine the nature and size of this role, Scheffers first of all examined the precise appearance and quantity of these ...

New law for resolution allows unprecedented sharpness in fluorescence microscopy

...cells non-invasively. However, because of the wave nature of light, focused light is subject to diffraction. As early as 1873, Ernst Abbe recognized that this fact imposes an absolute limit on resolution in microscopy. Abbe, whose 100th year death anniversary was in February, captured this limit in a formul...

DNA from feathers tells tale of eagle fidelity

...o identify individual Eastern imperial eagles in a nature reserve in Kazakhstan. Their analysis showed that ...Zapovednik (Naurzum State Nature Reserve), a large nature reserve in northern Kazakhstan. This reserve supports an unusual diversity of raptors and is home to...

Long-sought flower-inducing molecule found

...ved in an intense hunt trying to find out the true nature of "Florigen" which has been described as somethin...rail" for plant physiology. The reason is that the nature of "Florigen" is central for our understanding of how plant flowering is controlled. All attempts to...

UCSD discovery may provide novel method to generate medically useful proteins

...d much of the research. "Our discovery shows that nature has provided at least two completely different methods to generate a huge amount of protein variability, and it opens up a whole new platform for protein development." Other contributors to the paper were Jeffrey Lawton, Department of Chemistry, Eas...

Virginia Tech, Nanjing Institute researchers discover half-billion year-old fossils

...ls surely will enlighten the ongoing debate on the nature of Ediacara organisms that lived just before the evolution of familiar animals about 540-520 million years ago. ...

Researchers create functioning artificial proteins using nature's rules

...chers have discovered a set of simple "rules" that nature appears to use to design proteins, rules the scien...roteins in the lab, but to discover the rules that nature and evolution have used to design proteins," Dr. Ranganathan said. "The rules we have extracted from...

Unweaving amyloid fibers to solve prion puzzles

...hey can create an amyloid fiber. To understand the nature of this fiber, it's necessary to understand how the prions that comprise it attach to each other. Krishnan was able to identify the precise segment at which the prions interact--something that no one had done before him with a real prion. To do this...

Researchers predict infinite genomes

...is often simply the strain easiest to acquire from nature or grow in the lab. Yet scientists worldwide routinely tap these known genomes in public databases to hunt for drug targets, explain ecological niches, and chart evolution. How well do these microbial genomes reflect reality? As comparative genomic...

Primate virus jumps species barrier to humans for first time in Asia

...If you look at free-ranging monkeys in Singapore's nature reserves, you see that feeding by visitors is not allowed, and it is actively discouraged," says Gregory Engel, an attending physician at Swedish/Providence Hospital in Seattle, Wash., a clinical instructor of family medicine at the University of Was...

Structures of marine toxins provide insight into their effectiveness as cancer drugs

...o study natural products take their cues from what nature has already done. We're adding deep biochemical meaning to this area." He adds that synthetic chemists hope that actin-based drugs might one day rival the success of Taxol, a powerful drug derived from a natural product that keeps breast-cancer cel...

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