Hybri

Hybrid grass may prove to be valuable fuel source

Giant Miscanthus (Miscanthus x giganteus), a hybrid grass that can grow 13 feet high, may be a valuable renewable fuel source for the future, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign say. Stephen P. Long, a professor of crop sciences and of plant biology, recently took that message to Dublin, Ireland, where the British Association for the Advancement of Science sponso...

Agilent Technologies Introduces First Commercial Mouse Microarray for Comparative Genomic Hybridization Research

Tuberculosis remains a major global health threat. Although more than 3 billion doses of the BCG vaccine have been administered to fight tuberculosis, the ability of the BCG vaccine to protect adults is very limited, as is its efficacy against newly emerging isolates. In a study appearing online on August 18 in advance of print publication of the September 1 issue of the Journal of Clinica...

Divergent mating systems and parental conflict as a barrier to hybridization in flowering plants

Sexual reproduction can be thought of as a cooperative process in which two individuals come together to produce a new individual. It can also be viewed as a process in which two parties with differing interests, investment, and background interact to produce a new individual. From the former perspective, parental interests are unified (both wish to produce vigorous offspring), while the latter s...

New hybrid virus provides targeted molecular imaging of cancer

Researchers at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center have created a new class of hybrid virus and demonstrated its ability to find, highlight, and deliver genes to tumors in mice. Researchers say the advance, reported in the journal Cell, is potentially an important step in making human cancer both more visible and accessible to treatment; it may also allow prediction and mo...

Ring-like formations in drying DNA drops could affect hybridization studies

Coffee drinkers are familiar with the ring-shaped stains that result from spilled drops that have dried, in which the brown stain is not evenly distributed, but instead concentrated at the edge. Now, a team led by Gerard Wong, a professor of materials science and engineering, physics, and bioengineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has found the same "coffee-ring" formation i...

Study provides new understanding of spontaneous hybridization

Plant and animal breeders have long used hybridization to transfer useful traits between species. But does the same process happen without human aid? In a new study in the June issue of American Naturalist, Kenneth D. Whitney (Indiana University and Rice University), Rebecca A. Randell (Indiana University), and Loren H. Rieseberg (Indiana University), explore how spontaneous hybridization ?known...

Geneticists discover genes that make fruit fly hybrids sterile

While hybrids -- the result of the mating of two different species -- may offer interesting and beneficial traits, they are usually sterile or unable to survive. For example, a mule, the result of the mating of a horse and a donkey, is sterile. Now, Cornell researchers have made the first identification of a pair of genes in any species that are responsible for problems unique to hybrids....

Hybrid molecule causes cancer cells to self-destruct

By joining a sugar to a short-chain fatty acid compound, Johns Hopkins researchers have developed a two-pronged molecular weapon that kills cancer cells in lab tests. The researchers cautioned that their double-punch molecule, described in the December issue of the journal Chemistry & Biology, has not yet been tested on animals or humans. Nevertheless, they believe it represents a promising n...