Tag: "produce" at biology news

Blood sugar's manufacture limited by building blocks' supply

...ers traced that deficiency back to an inability to produce new glucose in the liver, a process known as gluconeogenesis, due to a defect in the processing of amino acids. Amino acids are the main ingredients of proteins and the source of a key substrate in blood sugar's production. "Gluconeogenesis is a c...

Ancient genes used to produce salt-tolerant wheat

...k it too can be improved. Our aim is to eventually produce wheats able, like barley, to grow in highly saline soils," Dr Munns says. Over six per cent of the world's arable land is affected by salinity. Salt tolerant crops can provide farmers with income for remediation, as well as helping to stabilise so...

Scientists genetically engineer tomatoes with enhanced folate content

...vegetables like spinach, but few people eat enough produce to get the suggested amount of folate. So, in 1998, the Food and Drug Administration made it mandatory that many grain productssuch as rice, flour and cornmeal be enriched with a synthetic form of folate known as folic acid. Folate deficiencies re...

Using nanomagnets to enhance medical imaging

...ng with two universities and a hospital to design, produce and test nanomolecules that might make MRI imaging more powerful and easier to perform. The new paper resolves a debate in the literature by showing that iron-containing magnets just two nanometers wide, dissolved in water, do provide reasonable cont...

Glucose triggers brain cell death in rats after hypoglycemic coma

... broken down and used for energy. Diabetics do not produce enough of their own insulin and must take it several times a day. A severe insulin overdose can reduce levels of glucose in the blood to extremely low levels –?a condition known as hypoglycemia –?and cause hypoglycemic coma, resulting in destructi...

Fascinating spider silk

...m has now successfully used genetic engineering to produce one of the spider silk proteins of the European garden spider (Araneus daidematus). While purifying the protein by dialysis, the researchers observed the separation of two different fluid phases. Whereas one phase consisted of protein dimers, the sec...

Gene found for rare disorder may reveal new pathway in mental retardation

...nly about 5 percent of CdLS cases. All three genes produce proteins called cohesin proteins. Cohesin proteins have long been known to play an important role in many species in controlling the integrity of chromosome pairs during cell division. Recent research has unexpectedly showed that mutated genes alo...

Navigable nanotransport

...n takes place. The researchers used this method to produce capsules with diameters ranging from 50 to 600 nm. The little disks used in this process deserve special consideration: Kim and his colleagues chose to use curcurbiturils. These disk-shaped molecules have a cavity at their center. As their shape r...

Need oxygen? Cells know how to spend and save

...or destroy cells. The mitochondria are designed to produce energy without excess free radical production at normal oxygen levels. Semenza's team noticed that one particular component of the COX protein complex, COX4, comes in two different forms, COX4-1 and COX4-2. Under normal oxygen conditions, the ce...

Tropical forests -- Earth's air conditioner

...tropical forests store large amounts of carbon and produce reflective clouds, they are especially good at cooling the planet. In contrast, forests in snowy areas can warm the Earth, because their dark canopy absorbs sunlight that would otherwise be reflected back to space by a bright white covering of snow. ...

Woven scaffolds could improve cartilage repair

...painful joint," Guilak said. Most machines that produce fabrics weave one set of fibers that are oriented perpendicularly to another set of fibers. However, the machine that Moutos developed adds a third set of fibers, which creates a three-dimensional product. Also, since the scaffold is a woven material...

'Guardian of the genome' protein found to underlie skin tanning

...by skin cells called melanocytes and spurs them to produce skin-darkening pigment called melanin. The chain o...n the sun. The same process that causes POMC to produce alpha-MSH also leads to the production of b-endorphin, a protein that binds to the body's opiate rec...

Bypassing eggs, flu vaccine grown in insect cells shows promise

...milar technology using human cell lines is used to produce the hepatitis B vaccine, while one form of a vacci...f a vaccine. It’s typically a six-month process to produce enough flu vaccine to protect the public. Taking eggs out of the process would likely slice one o...

Scientists learn the origin of rogue B cells

... cells. B cells are formed in the bone marrow and produce antibodies. Antibodies are generated from the cutting and splicing of immunoglobulin genes early in B-cell development, and have the potential to develop strong and highly specific affinity for different pathogens. When an infectious pathogen (a dise...

Scientists uncover link between ocean's chemical processes and microscopic floating plants

...dity to changes in phytoplankton, which themselves produce "greenhouse gases." "Pronounced changes in some phytoplankton have been observed during previous experiments," said Wingenter. "The consequences for marine organisms, their ecosystems and climate-relevant gases are unknown." During the study, con...

Remote sheep population resists genetic drift

...and fecund species of sheep, with the ewes able to produce an average of more than five offspring in a four-year lifespan. The Haute Island mouflon population peaked around 700 in the 1970s and since then has bounced between 200 and 600. Coltman and his colleagues were able to trace the DNA of the origina...

ConocoPhillips establishes $22.5M biofuels research program at Iowa State

...iversity dedicated to developing technologies that produce biorenewable fuels. The grant is part of ConocoPhi...joint research programs with major universities to produce viable solutions to diversify America's energy sources. ConocoPhillips will make an initial $1.5 m...

Hybrid molecule causes cancer cells to self-destruct

...ut whether this butyrate-ManNAc hybrid alone would produce the positive results, the researchers tested three other sugar-butyrate combinations and a butyrate salt compound with no sugar attached. The four other formulas and the butyrate-ManNAc hybrid were each added to lab dishes containing cancer cells. Af...

Fighting influenza & co. with 40,000 blood samples

...eady been proven that the older body can no longer produce a sufficient amount of effective antibodies. 'We want to know in particular whether this is the case with infectious diseases where the viruses were discovered recently,' Oliver Schildgen says. SARS's little brother To do this the scientists ...

Scientists find hormone activity explains adolescent mood swings

The "raging hormones" of puberty are known to produce mood swings and stress for most teenagers, making ...lta GABA-A receptors, increasing brain activity to produce a state of increased anxiety. Stress also increased anxiety at puberty, due to the paradoxical effec...

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