Lexi

Genome of deadly amoeba shows surprising complexity, evidence of lateral gene transfer

The genome sequence of the parasitic amoeba Entamoeba histolytica, a leading cause of severe diarrheal disease in developing countries, includes an unexpectedly complex repertoire of sensory genes as well as a variety of bacterial-like genes that contribute to the organism's unique biology. The report, which appears in the February 24 issue of Nature, presents the first genome-wide study...

NYU, Rockefeller researchers find complexity of regulation by microRNA genes

Collaborating researchers at New York University and Rockefeller University have discovered that microRNA genes, which have recently been shown to have key roles in gene regulation, can team up and regulate target genes in mammals. MicroRNAs are a recently discovered large class of regulatory, non-coding genes, which bind to partially complementary sites in target messenger RNA to regulate their...

How E. coli bacterium generates simplicity from complexity

The ubiquitous and usually harmless E. coli bacterium, which has one-seventh the number of genes as a human, has more than 1,000 of them involved in metabolism and metabolic regulation. Activation of random combinations of these genes would theoretically be capable of generating a huge variety of internal states; however, researchers at UCSD will report in the Dec. 27 issue of Proceedings of the...

Evolution of 'irreducible complexity' explained

Using new techniques for resurrecting ancient genes, scientists have for the first time reconstructed the Darwinian evolution of an apparently "irreducibly complex" molecular system. Ho...

Complexity constrains evolution of human brain genes

Despite the explosive growth in size and complexity of the human brain, the pace of evolutionary change among the thousands of genes expressed in brain tissue has actually slowed since the split, millions of years ago, between human and chimpanzee, an international research team reports in the December 26, 2006, issue of the journal, PLOS Biology. The rapid advance of the human brain, the...

New dyslexia theory blames 'noise'

The dyslexic brain struggles to read because even small distractions can throw it off, according to a new model of dyslexia emerging from a group of recent studies. Instead, the studies suggest that children with dyslexia have bad filters f...

Exploring the molecular origin of blood clot flexibility

How do blood clots maintain that precise balance of stiffness for wound healing and flexibility to go with the flow? Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and the School of Arts and Sciences have shown that a well-known protein structure acts as a molecular spring, explaining one way that clots may stretch and bend under such physical stresses as blood flow. They report...

Study identifies 5 genetic themes key to keeping stem cells in a primitive, flexible state

Now, a team of Canadian scientists has identified 1,155 genes und...