Surprise in Biological News

Stem cell surprise for tissue regeneration

Baltimore, MDScientists working at the Carnegie Institution's Department of Embryology, with colleagues, have overturned previous research that identified critical genes for making muscle stem cells. It turns out that the genes that make muscle stem cells in the embryo are surprisingly not needed ...

MIT reels in RNA surprise with microbial ocean catch

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--An ingenious new method of obtaining marine microbe samples while preserving the microbes' natural gene expression has yielded an unexpected boon: the presence of many varieties of small RNAs snippets of RNA that act as switches to regulate gene expression in these single-celled...

New test could help consumers avoid surprise headaches from chocolate, wine

Researchers in California are reporting development of a fast, inexpensive test suitable for home use that could help millions of people avoid those out of the blue headaches that may follow consumption of certain red wines, cheese, chocolate, and other aged or fermented foods. The test is des...

Vanishing beetle horns have surprise function

The function of horned beetles' wild protrusions has been a matter of some consternation for biologists. Digging seemed plausible; combat and mate selection, more likely. Even Charles Darwin once weighed in on the matter, suggesting -- one imagines with some frustration -- the horns were merely orn...

Genetic surprise confirms neglected 70-year-old evolutionary hypothesis

Biologists at the University of Rochester have discovered that an old and relatively unpopular theory about how a single species can split in two turns out to be accurate after all, and acting in nature. The finding, reported in today's issue of Science, reveals that scientists must reassess the ...

Worms produce surprise insight into human fever

Give or take a few dozen trillions, a human adult has about 70 trillion cells. An adult Caenorhabditis elegans roundworm has exactly 959 cells. Yet we have an awful lot in common, says Alejandro Aballay of Duke University, who has been exploring two “highly conserved? cell-signaling pathways fo...

Fish species plays surprise role in aiding coral reef recovery

In a study that marks progress in understanding the basis of coral reef recovery, researchers have revealed the critical importance of a rare batfish, Platax pinnatus, in promoting the return to health of a disturbed coral reef overgrown with algae. The findings bring to light a previously unrecogn...

A surprise about our body clock

Researchers at the McEwen Centre for Regenerative Medicine at Toronto General Hospital have discovered the 'SOS' distress signal that mobilizes specific heart repair cells from the bone marrow to the injured heart after a heart attack. While it has long been known that bone marrow cells have the ...

Secrets to antibody's success against West Nile Virus surprise scientists

Insights may advance vaccines for related viruses including dengue fever. A monoclonal antibody that can effectively treat mice infected with West Nile virus has an intriguing secret: Contrary to scientists' expectations, it does not block the virus's ability to attach to host cells. Instead, the a...

New protein vital for immune response is found in surprise location

A newly discovered protein not only is vital to the immune system's ability to fight off viral infections but also has been found in an unexpected location within the cell, causing researchers to rethink previous notions about the workings of the human immune system. Researchers at UT Southwester...

Researchers make surprise discovery that some neurons can transmit three signals at once

Generations of neuroscientists have been indoctrinated into believing that our senses, thoughts, feelings and movements are orchestrated by a communication network of brain cells, or neurons, each responsible for relaying one specific chemical message called a neurotransmitter. Either neurons relea...

Venomous sea snakes play heads or tails with their predators

...ily distracted by a second snake, but when looking back he was surprised to see the "head" was facing him while the tail probed the coral. Rasmussen's surprise grew when he saw a second head emerge from the coral instead of the expected tail. It was only when the snake swam away that the first head was clearl...

Frost & Sullivan Recognizes MIRTEC With the 2009 Award for Automated Optical Inspection Product Innovation of the Year

...laser inspection technology, an award winning global support organization, a diversified customer base, and an expanded geographic presence. It is no surprise that despite difficult economic conditions, MIRTEC has recorded triple digit growth in global sales revenue, which serves as testimony to its exceptio...

LSUHSC shows for first time infant inhalation of ultrafine air pollution linked to adult lung disease

...irflow limitations, and permanent changes in immune responses. "It is no surprise that elevations in airborne particulate matter (PM) are associated with inc...oms including asthma exacerbations," notes Dr. Cormier. "What has come as a surprise is that early exposure to elevated levels of PM elicits long-term effects o...

Hush little baby... Linking genes, brain and behavior in children

... It comes as no surprise that some babies are more difficult to soothe than others but frustrated parents may be relieved to know that this is not necessarily an indication of...

Exploring standards to advance microbial genomics

...ll life on the planet. Exceedingly numerous, they are also extremely diverse, encompassing most of Earth's total biodiversity. So it should come as no surprise to find that two-thirds of the nearly 5,000 genome projects reported in the Genomes OnLine Database ( http://www.genomesonline.org ) involve microbes....

Neural stem cell differentiation factor discovered

...th Factor-like domain 7) is such an inhibitory factor. EGFL7 had already been known from its involvement in the development of blood vessels. It was a surprise when we discovered that EGFL7 bound the extracellular domains of Notch receptors and competed with known Notch ligands" explains Ivan Dikic from the I...

Scripps Research scientists observe human neurodegenerative disorder in fruit flies

...me people with Charcot-Marie-Tooth have mutations in their genes that make a critical human protein called tyrosyl-tRNA synthetase. This came as a surprise to many scientists, says Paul Schimmel, who is the Ernest and Jean Hahn Professor and Chair of Molecular Biology and Chemistry and is a member of The ...

American Chemical Society's Weekly PressPac -- June 3, 2009

... ARTICLE #1 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Wine in a box? Think "good" not "gauche" Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry In a surprise discovery that may help boxed wine shake off its image as a gauche alternative to bottles, scientists in Canada are reporting that multilayer aseptic ...

Spring agricultural fires have large impact on melting Arctic

...tensively during two three-week periods last spring and summer and focused on the transport of pollutants into the Arctic from lower latitudes. One surprise discovery was that large-scale agricultural burning in Russia, Kazakhstan, China, the U.S., Canada, and the Ukraine is having a much greater impact th...

Wings that waggle could cut aircraft emissions by 20 percent

...ppen when blowing over a bottle. Dr Duncan Lockerby, from the University of Warwick, who is leading the project, said: "This has come as a bit of a surprise to all of us in the aerodynamics community. It was discovered, essentially, by waggling a piece of wing from side to side in a wind tunnel." "The ...

Neuroscientists discover long-term potentiation in the olfactory bulb

...d the researchers to see entire brain cells and then test whether different types of inputs to the cell could mediate olfactory memory. "The real surprise in the study was the specific brain connection that changed following experience. It was a rarely-studied brain projection from the cortex back to the...

Dolphins maintain round-the-clock visual vigilance

... asleep during testing, the dolphin would only see the shapes through the eye connected to the conscious half of the brain. But the team were in for a surprise when they began training SAY's left eye. She already recognised the shapes, even though her left eye had not seen them previously. Ridgway explains th...

Brain protein central to both Parkinson's, drug addiction identified

...ich has been often overlooked by scientists focused more on cells known as neurons that send electrical signals. Astrocytes' role in Parkinson's is no surprise to brain experts who have also identified them as a player in Alzheimer's disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, epilepsy, and other diseases. "As...

Experts lay to rest long-held misconceptions about high fructose corn syrup at ILSI-USDA workshop

...h fructose corn syrup is not high in fructose, but rather has roughly half fructose and half glucose, just like sugar therefore, it should come as no surprise that high fructose corn syrup and sugar are metabolized the same way in our bodies." Increased Caloric Intake, Not a Single Sweetener, the Likely ...

Gladstone scientists identify key factors in heart cell creation

...nough. "When we finally identified the key factor that could work with GATA4 and TBX5 to turn cells into beating heart cells, it was somewhat of a surprise to us," said Dr. Bruneau. The surprising factor was a cardiac-specific protein called BAF60c, which helps determine whether transcription factors ...

Canadian biomedical engineering pioneer receives international award

...ril 22 in San Antonio, Texas. "I am honoured and humbled to receive this award given the calibre of past recipients," said Prof. Brash. "It was a surprise when I was notified of the award. Much of the recognition must be shared with the numerous colleagues, peers, and students I have been fortunate to h...

A biological basis for the 8-hour workday?

...nior author John Hogenesch, PhD, Associate Professor of Pharmacology in the Institute for Translational Medicine and Therapeutics at Penn. "What was a surprise to us although we set up the experiment to see exactly this are the 12-hour and the 8-hour cycles. To uncover these shorter oscillations, the Ho...

Remembrance of things past influences how female field crickets select mates

...ogy at UCR. "The vast majority of studies of insect learning focus on foraging behavior, and in non-social insects like field crickets it is truly a surprise to find that they can change their behavior based on remembered social information. "Usually, we think of evolutionary pressure, or selection, as a...

Male flower parts responsible for potent grapevine perfume: UBC research

...nd Michael Smith Laboratories identified a gene that produces and regulates fragrance from the vines' tiny clusters of green blossoms. "This was a surprise in fundamental plant biology," says Joerg Bohlmann, a Distinguished University Scholar and professor in the Michael Smith Laboratories who directed th...

Genetic switch potential key to new class of antibiotics

...aptamer domain binds to preQ0, and about how that binding empowers the switch to lock up, or sequester, the mRNA's ribosome binding site. The true surprise came when the study revealed that the mechanism which enables the preQ1 aptamer loop to bind to the first base in the ribosome binding site is a stand...

Human ES cells progress slowly in myelin's direction

...te development in mouse ES cells actually stalls it in human ES cells. As Dr Zhang reveals, these findings were quite unexpected. 'This was quite a surprise given that this is exactly how we direct mouse ES cells to become oligodendrocytes. But we have discovered an unexpected twist in the cell's response ...

Research could lead to new non-antibiotic drugs to counter hospital infections

...e," said John Alverdy, corresponding author of the study and professor of surgery at the University of Chicago Medical Center. "That should come as no surprise since the bacteria are smart, having been around for 2 billion years." Bacteria seek phosphate as an important nutrient, Alverdy explained. And rat...

Male flower parts responsible for potent grapevine perfume: UBC research

...nd Michael Smith Laboratories identified a gene that produces and regulates fragrance from the vines' tiny clusters of green blossoms. "This was a surprise in fundamental plant biology," says Joerg Bohlmann, a Distinguished University Scholar and professor in the Michael Smith Laboratories who directed th...

Potential new HIV drug may help patients not responding to treatment

... to carry out further research to explore how D-1mT is working. "The effect D-1mT seemed to have on viral load was really encouraging but it was a surprise to us - we didn't expect D-1mT to work only in macaques that were already being treated with ART. It seems that D-1mT synergises with ART and we would...

UF scientist tapped by Howard Hughes Medical Institute to pursue 'best ideas'

...talia development, like outgrowth and closure of the urethral tube," Cohn said. "The incidence of genitourinary malformations in humans came as a huge surprise to me. A staggeringly high frequency of one in 250 kids has a urethral tube defect, and that number has more than doubled in the past 30 years without...

UK researcher identifies just 8 patterns as the cause of all humor

...t has ever been imagined or expressed, regardless of civilization, culture or personal taste. Clarke has stated before that humour is based on the surprise recognition of patterns but this is the first time he has identified the precise nature of the patterns involved, addressing the deceptively simple un...

A paradigm shift in immune response regulation

...agues report that NEMO specifically binds to linear ubiquitin chains and that this is an essential step for NF-κB activation. This came as a big surprise to the team, since it was previously thought that other types of ubiquitin signals were critical for NEMO-dependent NF-κB activation. "This resu...

Malaria immunity trigger found for multiple mosquito species

...uemei Dong also found that Rel 2 activation did not affect the survival and egg laying fitness of the modified mosquitoes. "This came as a pleasant surprise since it essentially means that we one day could spread this trait in natural mosquito populations using genetic modification. Furthermore, by activat...

GEN reports biomanufacturers target a fully disposable process stream

...s feasible and even within reach, according to the March 1 issue of GEN ( www.genengnews.com/articles/chitem.aspx?aid=2818 ). "It should come as no surprise that bioprocess disposables are rapidly gaining in popularity within the industry as their use minimizes expensive validation studies and avoids many ...