The first tree genome is published: Poplar holds promise as renewable bioenergy resource
...ighlighting the analysis of the first complete DNA sequence of a tree, the black cottonwood or Populus trichocarpa, lays the groundwork that may lead to the development of trees as an ideal "feedstock" for a new generation of biofuels such as cellulosic ethanol. The research is the result of a four-year scien...Coral stress 'like never in history'
...ich dated back as far as 11 000 years ago. "The sequence of fossils is like a three dimensional movie of what happened in the reefs?past," says Pandolfi. Over the 6000 years recorded in the fossil strata the team found 4 devastating events which resulted in the death of most of the reef ?indicating su...Scientists discover role for dueling RNAs
...n, produce an "anti-sense" RNA molecule, one whose sequence is complementary to that of the messenger, or sense, RNA. Antisense RNA has been detected for a number of genes, but is largely considered a genetic oddity. Using common baker's yeast, Cintia Hongay, a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of White...Boston University biomedical engineers win major grant for pursuit of the '$1,000 Genome'
...rk. Meller is using novel methods to decode the sequence of bases on a DNA strand at the molecular level. U... to it, which allows the researchers to record the sequence of bases as the strand emerges from the nanopore. Meller has devised a system of lasers and highly s...Researchers discover key mechanism by which lethal viruses Ebola and Marburg cause disease
...ause disease. The identification of an amino acid sequence in Filoviruses that results in the rapid depression of immunological response is described in the December 2006 issue of The FASEB Journal. Using this information, researchers can begin to develop new drugs to stop these devastating diseases. Filov...Stanford discovery may help predict when toxoplasma can be deadly
...vels of virulence, such as high variability of the sequence and the ability to be secreted from the organism to enter the host. This led them to two particularly compelling proteins - ROP16 and ROP18. Both are protein kinases, molecules that are used in the transmission of cellular messages. "If a parasit...Caterpillars tell us how bacteria cause disease
...e post-genomic era where it has become possible to sequence a whole bacterial genome without necessarily knowing the biological function of individual genes," Dr Waterfield said. His study focuses on bacteria called Photorhabdus asymbiotica which is known to infect both insects and humans. Dr Waterfield an...Experimental vaccine protects mice against deadly 1918 flu virus
...ctive and universal vaccines." Using the genetic sequence information for the 1918 flu virus, Dr. Nabel and his VRC colleagues created plasmids--small strands of DNA designed to express specific characteristics--carrying genes for the virus' hemagglutinin (HA) protein, the surface protein found in all flu v...Genomic comparison of lactic acid bacteria published
...ccus, Leuconostoc, and Lactobacillus species. "The sequence of these diverse species offered a window into the sugar metabolism and energy conversion systems of LAB, and the evolution of these systems, which helped identify key enzymes involved in the production of end products including acetic acid, lactic a...Advance helps explain stem cell behavior
...functions. "It's clear that there is an extended sequence of steps which turn some genes on and others off, allowing a cell to become a liver cell, for instance, rather than a brain cell," said Chrissa Kioussi, an OSU assistant professor of pharmacology and co-author on the study. "We were able to use a sys...Molecular mechanism provides intra-cellular traffic signal
...hey have now shown that components of TRAPP act in sequence to direct the flow. One form of TRAPP turns on the first Ypt for entry into the Golgi, while at the other end of the Golgi, two subunits join TRAPP to activate the Ypt required for exit from the Golgi, Segev said. Segev said the mechanism that her...Plague proteome reveals proteins linked to infection
...ding algorithm that matches no other known protein sequence or contains no other evidence that it is an actual product of a gene. The study authors said the same approach is being applied to a search for biomarkers across a wide range of biological systems, from other infectious agents such as Salmonella t...Novel EGFR ectodomain mutations in glioblastoma
... tumor. The researchers sequenced the whole coding sequence of the EGFR gene in more than 100 glioblastomas. N...ense mutations—changes that altered the amino acid sequence of EGFR. But the mutations were mostly different from the ones commonly seen in other cancers: rath...New technology used to construct the first map of structural variation in the human genome
...tream of one-letter characters in the human genome sequence lies a complex, higher-order code. In order to de...y, which was constructed from the same DNA used to sequence the human genome in 2001. The array covers 93.7% of the euchromatic (gene-containing) regions of th...International team analyzes human genetic variation in key immune region
...he researchers analyzed the variability in its DNA sequence in more than 350 individuals from diverse geograph...rphisms (SNPs) together with short segments of DNA sequence from a set of highly variable genes within the MHC, called "HLA genes." These genes form a distincti...Complexity constrains evolution of human brain genes
..., Wu and colleagues in Taiwan and Japan decided to sequence several thousand genes expressed in the brain of the macaque monkey and compare them with available genomic sequences from human, chimpanzee, and mice. What they found was that the "more advanced" species had faster overall rates of evolution. ...Jefferson researchers uncover new way nature turns genes on and off
...same cells as Ubx, and to regulate HOX gene coding sequence expression. But the researchers found something different: ncRNAs instead can repress Ubx activity by blocking its activity in certain types of cells in the developing embryo. "Importantly, non-coding RNAs are very tightly developmentally regulate...MIT finds most complex protein knot ever seen
...te that somewhere along the evolutionary line, the sequence that allowed a protein to form the knot was added or deleted. The third author on the paper is Mehran Kardar, an MIT physics professor. The research was funded by the National Science Foundation and the German Research Foundation. ...Better sludge through metagenomics
... The metagenomic strategy entails generating DNA sequence information directly from samples of sewage sludge...es, we were able to isolate and acquire the genome sequence of Accumulibacter phosphatis without a pure culture of the organism, which, like most microbes, elud...... with Nature's publication of the honey bee genome sequence (also Thursday 26 October 2006). The results are based on an analysis of the same 185 genes found in the genomes of eight different insect families, which together represent 45 per cent of all known animal species. This enabled the internation...