Tag: "puzzles" at biology news

Genes and genius: Researchers confirm association between gene and intelligence

If you're particularly good with puzzles or chess, the reason may be in your genes. A team of scientists, led by psychiatric geneticists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, has gathered the most extensive evidence to date that a gene that activates signaling pathways...

MIT device draws cells close -- but not too close -- together

... problem involved another children's game: plastic puzzles with squares that slide around on a grid. They wondered if they could put different cells on each square and then move them around. This idea quickly evolved into an elegant tool designed expressly for biologists. The device involves two sepa...

Penn researcher shows that DNA gets kinky easily at the nanoscale

... the tools of nanotechnology to answer fundamental puzzles of biology." ...

The biggest bug in gut discomfort

...ers now have some answers to one of the most basic puzzles surrounding C. jejuni infections. How could such a large bacteria gain access to human intestinal epithelial cells that do not normally take up particles of such size" And once inside, how does C. jejuni disappear off the conventional endocytic road ...

Leptin found to control appetite and limb development in frogs

...between frogs and humans, so Denver's lab had some puzzles to solve to successfully clone the frog gene. But once they solved those issues and put the gene into E. coli bacteria to make quantities of leptin, the frog protein turned out to be functionally very similar to the human version, Denver notes. "It...

APS lecturer shows rare video of 'teacher-student' immune cell interactions in live animal

...h node and proliferate to huge numbers. One of the puzzles von Andrian has been working on, is how foreign invaders manage to proliferate in the very area, the lymph node, where the immune system is marshaling its troops. "So understanding how these (foreign) cells survive in the lion's den of the lymph nod...

A new way of looking at molecular motors

...elp other researchers address important biomedical puzzles more precisely. "We hope our work will help scientists ask the right questions and perform the right kind of experiments on myosins," Foth said. "In the long term, that could lead to new drug targets being discovered more quickly." Molecular moto...

Newly identified mechanism helps explain why people of African descent are more vulnerable to TB

...able to TB. This study helps to resolve two of the puzzles of tuberculosis, the differences between mice and human antibacterial mechanisms, and the susceptibility of people of African and possibly Asian descent to tuberculosis. The researchers suggest a need for clinical trials to investigate the effect of...

Vitamin A's paradoxical role in influencing symmetry during embryonic development revealed

...port that they have solved one of the "holy grail" puzzles of developmental biology: the existence of a mechanism that insures that the exterior of our bodies is symmetrical while inner organs are arranged asymmetrically. In research with zebra fish, as a model for human biology, Juan-Carlos Belmonte and hi...

To sea or not to sea: When it comes to salmon sex, size sometimes doesn't matter

...s that stay and the ones that stray are biological puzzles among Pacific salmon, of whom the vast majority ?but not all ?travel thousands of miles to sea and back to the streams where they hatched. There are chinook salmon populations in Idaho in which an occasional male stays put and matures when only 6 in...

Family trees of ancient bacteria reveal evolutionary moves

...Blank said. "This time frame is one of the biggest puzzles for biologists and geologists alike. A huge amount of things are happening then in the geological record." ...

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