Rod in Biological News

Flexible neck in cell-receptor DC-SIGN targets more pathogens

...binding-induced, and made possible by a flexible linker in the neck, the researchers report. "The protein neck region acts as a stiff, but flexible, rod that projects the molecule's binding sites away from the cell surface," Leckband said. "A rigid presentation of the binding sites at the end of the ne...

Identification of a key molecular pathway required for brain neural circuit formation

... all of the molecules required to guide axons correctly during spinal cord healing, we would probably know how to heal spinal cord injuries," says Dr. rod McInnes, Scientific Director of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research Institute of Genetics. "This is beautiful research that adds another major ...

When every photon counts

...e and its visual challenges had a unique impact on rod nuclear organisation: The distributions of the den...diurnal mammals. With this unique arrangement, the rod nuclei of nocturnal mammals act as micro-lenses th... outer segments of the rods. Hence, this change in rod nuclear organisation improves vision at nocturnal ...

Engineers develop method to disperse chemically modified graphene in organic solvents

...modified graphene sheets in a wide variety of organic solvents has been developed by a University of Texas at Austin engineering team led by Professor rod Ruoff, opening the door to use graphene in a host of important materials and applications such as conductive films, polymer composites, ultracapacitor...

Fifth annual Templeton-Cambridge fellowships awarded to 10 noted journalists

... American Prospect, Fox News, and BBC Radio. The TempletonCambridge Journalism fellows named today are: Edwin Cartlidge, Freelance Journalist rod Dreher, Editorial Columnist, Dallas Morning News Joel Garreau, Reporter and Editor, Washington Post Lauren Green, Chief Religion Correspondent, Fox ...

Tall tale of giant stingray circles the globe

...Geographic expedition, is truly the world's largest freshwater fish, he said. The fish, caught by volunteer angler Ian Welch from a small boat using a rod and reel, will be featured in an upcoming documentary airing on the National Geographic Channel. "Surprisingly, we caught the stingray again four w...

Venter, Somerville and Church highlight DOE/JGI genomics of energy and environment meeting

...eomics Platform Steve Turner, Pacific Biosystems, Applying Single Molecule Real Time DNA Sequencing John Willis, Duke University, Mimulus guttatus rod Wing, University of Arizona, To REFSEQ or RESEQ Oryza That is the Question Registration is still open and can be accessed online: http://www.jg...

Gene's past could improve the future of rice

...food to feed the human population, and it needs to be done on less land and with less water. This could be the way to do that." Jackson worked with rod A. Wing of the University of Arizona and Mingsheng Chen of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, and they were the corresponding authors for the...

Our microbes, ourselves

...re which provides a characteristic fingerprint for microbial identification. The analysis was conducted with the assistance of University of Arizona's rod Wing at the Bio5 Institute, using a novel sequencing technique known as 454-pyrosequencing, which allows a significantly larger number and greater div...

Fishdunnit! Mystery solved

... Corresponding authors Drs. Frank Millero and Martin Grosell at the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science and Dr. rod Wilson of the University of Exeter note that given current concerns about the acidification of our seas through global CO2 emissions, it is more impor...

Fish guts explain marine carbon cycle mystery

...olve at much shallower depths (e.g. 500 to 1,000 metres). Lead author Dr rod Wilson of the University of Exeter (UK) said: "Our most conservative estima...ood directly stimulates carbonate production by the gut specifically. Dr rod Wilson continues: "We have really only just scratched the surface of knowin...

Bright lights, not-so-big pupils

... Curious about how these cells bear on behavior, the researchers examined pupil constriction in mice that had been genetically altered to be free of rod and cone function in order to focus on activity resulting from only melanopsin-containing cells. Flashing light at mice sitting in the dark, the team ...

Progression of retinal disease linked to cell starvation

... discs, resembling a stack of cookies. A cone stack is half the height of a rod stack. Stacks emanating from both types of cells get clustered together, li...ed an interesting pattern. Cone death always began after the major phase of rod death. Punzo analyzed gene expression before and after this point in eac...

1,000 tags reveal mysteries of giant bluefin tuna

...r in Pacific Grove, California, which is operated jointly by Stanford University and the Monterey Bay Aquarium. In the field, fish are caught using rod and reel and brought aboard the fishing vessel, where tags are externally attached, or surgically implanted inside the tuna. Each tag, ranging in pri...

Study rules out inbreeding as cause of amphibian deformities

...d in newts, a related amphibian, but on par and with frequencies seen in many frog species, said assistant professor of forestry and natural resources rod Williams. "This is really the first study to test - and disprove - the hypothesis that inbreeding is responsible for malformations in salamanders,"...

Gene therapy restores vision to mice with retinal degeneration

...ision. The MGH team used the standard viral vector adeno-associated virus to deliver the gene encoding melanopsin throughout the retinas of mice whose rod and cone photoreceptors had degenerated from lack of a crucial protein. Four weeks after delivery of the gene, melanopsin normally produced in 1 p...

Atomic-resolution views suggest function of enzyme that regulates light-detecting signals in eye

...he brain. This particular form of the enzyme comes from the cone photoreceptors of the retina and has not been well-researched, in contrast to its rod form. Rods are involved in night vision and motion sensation; the cones are responsible for color sensitivity, visual acuity, daylight vision, and adj...

NYU, American Museum of Natural History receive $1.6 million NSF grant

...proteins expressed by a genome. Richard Bonneau and Michael Purugganan, biologists from NYU's Center for Genomics and Systems Biology, along with rod DeSalle, curator from the Sackler Institute for Comparative Genomics at AMNH, will model species Arabidopsis thaliana (the most widely studied plant m...

Robot vehicle surveys deep sea off Pacific Northwest

...hat can track the vehicles' direction and speed with incredible precision. "Sentry is a true robot, functioning on its own in the deep water," said rod Catanach, a WHOI engineer who works with Sentry. "The vehicle is completely on its own from the time it is unplugged on the deck and cut loose in the ...

Wisconsin researchers describe how digits grow

...d in specific digit identities. "We thought that bone morphogenic protein (BMP) signals from interdigit cells were sent to the digit primordium, a rod of cartilage, in the neighboring digit ray, breaking up the cartilage into phalanges," Fallon says. Sean Hasso, Fallon's current graduate student,...

DOE JGI releases soybean genome assembly to enable worldwide bioenergy research efforts

...ersity, William Beavis of the National Center for Genome Resources (NCGR) in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Iowa State, Gregory May (NCGR), Will Nelson and rod Wing of the University of Arizona, with Randy Shoemaker, anchored the map and conducted quality control. The team devoted to genetic mapping and ph...

NOAA proposes federal regulations to protect black abalone

...view team reported major declines in the population of black abalone, especially in the areas around the Channel Islands off Southern California, said rod McInnis, Southwest Regional Administrator for NOAAs National Marine Fisheries Service. These proposed regulations seek federal protection for black ab...

'Electrospray' droplet research yields surprising, practical results

...id. In the experiments, an electric voltage was applied to a small metal rod positioned about an inch from a puddle of liquid. The liquid was pulled toward the tip of the rod and took on a conical appearance. Strands of liquid, which subsequently bro...

Media highlights in the November issues of Biophysical Journal

... a detailed atomic model of the Kv1.2 voltage-gated potassium channel in an explicit membrane using the crystallographic x-ray structure determined by rod MacKinnon (Rockefeller University) and his collaborators in 2005. A long-term endeavor of biophysical research is to advance our understanding of...

A tiny pinch from a 'z-ring' helps bacteria cells divide

...eproduce by dividing in two. When it is time for this to occur, the Z-ring receives a signal and begins to contract. This pinching continues until the rod breaks apart to form two daughter cells. Suns team gathered data from microbiology labs that are studying cell division and then translated these o...

Ragweed research is nothing to sneeze at

... away from the plants, the researchers set up an 18-foot-tall pole equipped with six pollen samplers mounted at different heights. Each sampler spun a rod coated with sticky silicone to capture pollen clumps moving through the air. The students have been able to count and study the pollen grains by placi...

Scientists eye secrets of retinal regeneration

...vered just how light-sensing discs in the retina's rod cells regenerate themselves. The retina uses t...that riddle." According to the researchers, the rod cell's outer segment is constantly pushing up and ... until it joins the hundreds of other discs on the rod cell's outer segment," Dr. Sung says. "All of this...

Nanotechnology meets biology and DNA finds its groove

...n a variety of settings." In addition to Schwartz and de Pablo, authors of the PNAS study include Kyubong Jo, Dalia M. Dhingra, Michael D. Grahm, rod Runnheim and Dan Forrest, all of UW-Madison, and Theo Odijk of the Delft University of Technology. The work underpinning the new DNA sampling met...

Opening windows may be the best way of preventing transmission of airborne infection

...an double that of mechanically ventilated negative-pressure rooms and 18 times that of rooms with windows and doors closed. The researchers, led by rod Escombe from Imperial College London, compared the airflow in 70 naturally ventilated clinical rooms such as respiratory isolation rooms, TB wards, re...

Transplanted photoreceptor precursor cells restore visual function in mice with retinal degeneration

...e University of Michigan Kellogg Eye Center to tag rod precursor cells and prepare them for transplantati...ements: the cells survive; correctly develop into rod photoreceptors; integrate and connect in sufficien...ished an important study describing the "birth" of rod cells.* They were able to make this process visibl...

Study provides first look at the 'birth' of a retina cell

...'s team reports that NRL is the earliest marker of rod precursors, or cells that are fated to become rods. They achieved this unique and early view of rod development by creating a mouse model using an NRL... a handle for investigating the precise process of rod differentiation. Rods, along with cones, are p...

Surprise finding for stretched DNA

...le is stretched. The model consists of an elastic rod that is wrapped around its outer surface by a stif...us to DNA's sugar-phosphate backbone. The elastic rod is constructed from a material that conserves volu...ess. "As this system is stretched, the elastic rod decreases in diameter," said Bustamante. "This en...

Plastic surgeons countdown first full facial transplantation

...at facial transplantation can improve the quality of life for patients, however, facial transplantation will not replace traditional techniques," said rod Rohrich, MD, editor of PRS. "This is an exciting time in plastic surgery, but it is important to remember that, at least in the near future, facial t...

'Prosthetic' retinal cells let blind mice see light

...type channelrhodopsins, such as ChR2, in surviving retinal neurons may be another potential strategy for the treatment of complete blindness caused by rod and cone degeneration," they wrote. ...

UCLA researchers identify key enzyme linked to childhood blindness

...indness. It is caused by mutations in several different genes including RPE65. An important characteristic of this disease is that the light sensitive rod and cone cells remain intact in the retinas of Leber patients for a long time. "This suggests that replacement of RPE65 by gene therapy should corr...

UQ researcher tracking key to healing the brain

...or the body, they can theoretically divide without limit to replenish cells lost due to everyday wear and tear, or following injury or disease. Dr rod Rietze, head of the Queensland Brain Institute's (QBI) Laboratory for Neural Stem Cell Biology, is hoping those stem cells may soon unlock the secrets...