Tag: "secret" at biology news

Noise echoes in cell communications

... "There is no life without noise; noise is the secret of life," suggests Martin, who points to the constant movement of particles under a microscope to illustrate this phenomena. Unlike a physics experiment that can produce the same result after various attempts, in biology, one particular experiment ca...

Researchers learn what sparks plant growth

A secret long held by plants has been revealed by Howard Hughes Medical Institute researchers. The new discovery, which builds on more than a decade of painstaking surveillance of cellular communication between different types of plant tissues, shows clearly ...

New research says winning a Nobel Prize adds nearly 2 years to your lifespan

... 1901 and 1950 (the full list of nominees are kept secret for 50 years). This gave them 528 male scientists with known biographical details (birth and death dates). They looked at one sex only to avoid differences in life span between sexes. They dropped four from that total who died prematurely for non bio...

Pregnancy hormone key to repairing nerve cell damage

...into remission while women are pregnant may be the secret to overcoming the devastating neurodegenerative disease, according to University of Calgary researchers who have shown that a pregnancy-related hormone is responsible for rebuilding the protective coating around nerve cells. In a paper to be publish...

Tears reveal some of their deepest secrets to researchers

It's no secret why we shed tears. But exactly what our tears are made of has remained a mystery to scientists. A new study sheds some light on the complex design of tears. What we think of as tears, scientists call tear film, which is made up of three distinct, mi...

Ultrathin films deliver DNA as possible gene therapy tool

...NA] back out of the films is the hard part." The secret to films that release DNA is in the choice of the polymer and the layer-cake design. The researchers alternate layers of DNA with layers of a polymer that is stable when dry but that degrades when exposed to water. Because the polymers carry a posi...

Scientists identify specific enzymes that make meningitis hard to fight

...xplains: "Scientists have long understood that the secret of meningitis' virulence lies in its ability to rearrange its DNA and thus change its external appearance to the body's immune system. Significantly our research has now demonstrated that the ability of meningitis to repair its DNA is important for i...

U of M researchers invent 'flashy' new process to turn soy oil, glucose into hydrogen

...ak up subsequent molecules of oil or sugar. "The secret is ultrafast flash volatilization [vaporization]," said Schmidt. "It happens here because we vaporize the fuel and mix it with oxygen before it sees the catalyst so it doesn't burn to char. This is potentially 100 times faster than what is currently ...

New technique boosts size of proteins that can be analyzed

Imagine you had to break a secret code, but you could see only part of the message. That's the kind of frustration researchers face when trying to identify proteins and characterize how those proteins are modified in cells by biological processes. But now, Cornell researchers have e...

With record resolution and sensitivity, tool images how life organizes in a cell membrane

...w they respond to their environment-may reveal the secret lives of cells in both health and disease. The researchers report their findings in the Sept. 29 issue of the journal Science. ''The organization of components in biological membranes leads to function,'' Boxer, the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Profess...

The secret lives of sea slugs

...se used to catch shoplifters to observe the slugs' secret lives, then described certain behaviors and their relationships to sensory cues. The goal of neuroethologists who study sea slugs in the laboratory is to link specific behaviors to their underlying neural controls. Information on behaviors and sen...

Researchers find protein that silences genes

...one parental set of ribosomal genes was really the secret to nucleolar dominance. In other words, all the factors needed for expression of the genes were in place but somehow the silenced genes were denied access to them. Since that time, Pikaard and his colleagues have been on the hunt for the proteins ...

'Molecular assassin' targets disease gene

... growth. "Our experimental drug, Dz13, is like a secret agent that finds its target, c-Jun, within the cell and destroys it," he said. "It is a specific, pre-programmed 'molecular assassin'." The paper in Nature Biotechnology shows the potential of c-Jun as a drug target in inflammation. It details tests...

Bacteria give up secrets in war waged on plants

The secret weapon of bacteria -- the way they get a foothold ...gy, and microbiology and molecular genetics. The secret weapon: a bacterium's protein targets a plant protein that serves as a line of defense against illne...

Mayo Clinic researchers discover cancer cells may move via wave stimulation

...o Clinic researchers have uncovered a new cellular secret that may explain how certain cancers move and spread -- a feature of cancers that makes treatment especially difficult. If the mechanism that drives cancer movement -- also called metastasis -- can be understood well enough to manipulate it, new and ...

Study reveals classic symbiotic relationship between ants, bacteria

...nts that tend and harvest gardens of fungus have a secret weapon against the parasites that invade their crops: antibiotic-producing bacteria that the insects harbor on their bodies. Writing today in the journal Science, an international team led by University of Wisconsin-Madison bacteriologist Cameron Cu...

MIT chemist discovers secret behind nature's medicines

...L. Drennan's recent crystallography sleuthing, the secret to the enzyme's enviable prowess has come to light and it appears almost anti-climactic. It's simply a matter of the size of one of its parts. "If an enzyme is a gun that fires to cause a reaction, then we wanted to know the mechanism that pulls the...

Engineers discover why toucan beaks are models of lightweight strength

...ki Seki and Matthew S. Schneider reported that the secret to the toucan beak's lightweight strength is an unusual bio-composite. The interior of the beak is rigid "foam" made of bony fibers and drum-like membranes sandwiched between layers of keratin, the protein that makes up fingernails, hair, and horn. J...

Study findings offer potential new targets for antibiotics

...ria that can become resistant to antibiotics. The secret lies in understanding the function of the ribosome, a tiny protein-making factory residing inside most cells. Many currently used antibiotics alter a ribosome's ability to make proteins, said Kurt Fredrick, a study co-author and an assistant profess...

Newly recognized gene mutation may reduce seeds, resurrect plants

...nt that seems to return from the dead may hold the secret to how some flora protect their progeny during yield-limiting drought and other stresses, according to Purdue University scientists whose study of the plant led to discovery of a gene. The gene, called RESURRECTION1 (RST1), has revealed a previously...

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