Tag: "switched" at biology news

Seal rookeries could provide a reliable food source for endangered California condors, study finds

...usands of cattle were brought here, so the condors switched their whole diet to cattle." The large cattle ranches disappeared within a few decades, once leaving the condors without a reliable food source. "After the cattle were gone, condors starting getting rarer and hence more valuable as collector's items...

Plant defenses prompt bacterial countermeasure in the form of 'island' DNA excision

...his genomic island also encodes enzymes that, when switched on, snip the DNA on either side of the island, resulting in the excision of the entire island from the genome. The researchers found that this excision occurs in response to a so-called hypersensitive resistance reaction by the plant . The specific p...

Viagra's hidden help for wildlife

... Western drug than vice versa. In fact, nobody had switched from a Western drug to a TCM treatment for impotence. "This was in contrast to their behaviour with the other three ailments - arthritis, indigestion and gout, where the men were more likely to be current users of a TCM treatment than a Western tre...

Magnetic probe successfully tracks implanted cells in cancer patients

...t to advance to clinical trials, the research team switched from the experimental magnetic tags to formulations of iron oxide already approved for clinical use in Europe (as Endorem) and the United States (as Feridex). Because immature dendritic cells naturally take up materials around them, they simply absor...

Scientists discover the molecular switch for nerve cells' insulating jelly rolls

...r, until now it wasn't clear whether the gene also switched on production of the sheath. In a series of experiments, Dr. Carla Taveggia, the first author of the study and an NYU research scientist, together with collaborators at NYU, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, and other instituti...

Gene that helps mosquitoes fight off malaria parasite identified

... determined that the SPRN6 gene, which is normally switched off in Anopheles stephensi and Anopheles gambiae mosquitoes, is switched on when they are infected with the malaria parasite. To determine the function of SPRN6, the researc...

Research casts doubt on circulating stem cells

...ntly "switched off" and the cells cannot simply be switched back on again. After all, what comes from bone marrow is generally blood and not muscle tissue. The story of a "jack of all trades" circulating via the blood stream throughout the body and repairing, wherever needed, any type of tissue is, unfortunat...

Neurotransmitters signal aggressive cancer, offer potential for early diagnosis

...involved in the production of these compounds were switched on in poor prognosis malignant metastatic tumors. ...uired to produce these metabolites were invariably switched on the poor prognosis but not the good prognosis tumor groups." "Most people understand the revolut...

Researchers devise new technique for creating human stem cells

...l genes characteristic of adult cells had all been switched off, while those characteristic of embryonic cells had been switched on. "With the exception of a few genes one way or the other -- which is perhaps because these cells ...

Spiders help scientists discover how muscles relax

...s that form our muscles and found out how they are switched off," said Raul Padron, a HHMI international resea...re formed and maintained and how the filaments are switched off due to interactions between the myosin heads Padron explained. "It also opens the way to underst...

Researchers discover mechanism for multiplying adult stem cells

...long been dormant. Hochedlinger found that when he switched the gene on, the mice immediately formed tumors in...and in the skin where the gene was active. When he switched the gene off, the tumors subsided, demonstrating that the process is reversible. Discovering that s...

Researchers develop promising new gene network analysis method

... answer a question. When a deadly "oncoprotein" is switched on, what chain reaction of gene activity does it s...o make a form of the c-Myc protein, which could be switched on or off by the hormone treatment tamoxifen. One batch of cells was treated with tamoxifen, then h...

Breakthrough System for Understanding Ocean Plant Life Announced

...s divide and reproduce. Trypanosomes whose VSG has switched evade the antibodies the human immune system made to fight the original antigen, thus assuring the long-term survival of these parasites within their hosts. The trypanosome has approximately 1,000 different VSG genes, but only expresses one at a time...

Newly discovered protein an important tool for sleeping sickness research

...s divide and reproduce. Trypanosomes whose VSG has switched evade the antibodies the human immune system made to fight the original antigen, thus assuring the long-term survival of these parasites within their hosts. The trypanosome has approximately 1,000 different VSG genes, but only expresses one at a time...

Currents could disrupt ocean food chain

...ation. A growing body of evidence suggests that it switched on and off 20 to 25 times during the last ice age. "During the last ice age, from about 100,000 years before present to 20,000 years B.P., thick ice sheets over Canada sporadically dropped armadas of icebergs into the North Atlantic where they melte...

Two chemicals boost immune cells' ability to fight HIV without gene therapy

...fen School of Medicine at UCLA. "The two compounds switched telomerase back on in the cells." In earlier research, the UCLA team showed that inserting the telomerase gene into the immune cells of an HIV-infected person prevented the cells from aging prematurely. The telomerase enabled the immune cells to div...

Gene keeps neural cells on correct developmental path

... among cell types arose from various sets of genes switched on inside developing cells. Then, studies showed that adult neurons uniquely lack a protein that permanently turns off neuronal genes in the rest of the body's cells. Now, it turns out that precursor nerve cells contain that same repressive protein ...

Variation in women's X chromosomes may explain differences among individuals, between sexes

...genes on one copy of the female's X chromosome are switched off, a modification known as X inactivation. Originally, scientists had assumed that the inactivation process resulted in complete silencing of the genes on the second X chromosome, Willard said, in order to leave both sexes with the same activity l...

Beyond lithium for bipolar disorder

...have identified genes whose activity appears to be switched on by lithium, suggesting more direct targets for drugs to treat the disorder. Lithium is known to inhibit the production of an important cellular switch, called inositol monophosphate, so the researchers set out to find genes that were activated by...

Scientists discover unique microbe in California's largest lake

...separates theproteobacteria and cyanobacteria, and switched places with the portionof the gene that had originally been inherited from the cyanobacterialparent."This finding shows that even this popular evolutionary chronometer canbe a mosaic of genetic information with radically different origins,"Miller say...

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