known in Biological News

Evidence of earliest known domestic horses found in Kazakhstan

The earliest known domesticated horses were both ridden and milked according to a new report published in the March 6, 2009 edition of the journal Science . The findings by an international team of archaeologists could point to the very beginnings of horse domestication and help explain its early...

Earth's highest known microbial systems fueled by volcanic gases

Gases rising from deep within the Earth are fueling the world's highest-known microbial ecosystems, which have been detected near the rim of the 19,850-foot-high Socompa volcano in the Andes by a University of Colorado at Boulder research team. The new study shows the emission of water, carbon...

Census of Marine Life lists 122,500 known species, over halfway to complete inventory by Oct. 2010

Census of Marine Life-affiliated scientists consolidating world databases of ocean organisms have demoted to alias status almost one-third of all names culled from 34 regional and highly specialized inventories. The new World Register of Marine Species ( www.marinespecies.org ) contains about 1...

'Generalist bacteria' discovered in coastal waters may be more flexible than known before

Athens, Ga. Marine bacteria come almost a billion to a cup. Until recently, however, little has been known about how these minute creatures live or what they need to flourish. Now, new research led by a marine microbial ecologist at the University of Georgia is showing for the first time that ...

Researchers develop new ultrasensitive assay to detect most poisonous substance known

DUARTE, Calif. -- Scientists at City of Hope and the California Department of Public Health have developed a new ultrasensitive assay to detect botulinum neurotoxin. The toxin is one of the most poisonous substances known that can cause life-threatening disease, and is considered a major potenti...

390-million-year-old scorpion fossil -- biggest bug known

New Haven, Conn. The gigantic fossil claw of an 390 million-year-old sea scorpion, recently found in Germany, shows that ancient arthropods spiders, insects, crabs and the like were surprisingly larger than their modern-day counterparts. Imagine an eight-foot-long scorpion, said O. Erik Tet...

Ancient whale fall from California's Ao Nuevo Island one of youngest, most complete known

Berkeley -- A fossilized whale skeleton excavated 20 years ago amid the stench and noise of a seabird and elephant seal rookery on California's A o Nuevo Island turns out to be the youngest example on the Pacific coast of a fossil whale fall and the first in California, according to University of ...

Ancient whale fall from California's Año Nuevo Island one of youngest, most complete known

Berkeley -- A fossilized whale skeleton excavated 20 years ago amid the stench and noise of a seabird and elephant seal rookery on California's A o Nuevo Island turns out to be the youngest example on the Pacific coast of a fossil whale fall and the first in California, according to University of ...

Little known DNA repair enzyme may be a tumor suppressor gene

Use of the amino acid supplement L-arginine following a heart attack does not improve certain cardiac functions and measurements and may be associated with an increased risk of death, according to a study in the January 4 issue of JAMA. L-arginine is a widely available dietary supplement and is p...

Scientists develop a way to make the deadliest toxin known even more toxic

According to the study, the molecules bind to specific sites on the neurotoxin protein, increasing protease activity and enhancing the toxin's effect. In some cases, the study noted, the activation power of the new molecules was as much as fourteen-fold, the greatest increase in activation ever rep...

Newly Discovered Compound Blocks Known Cancer-Causing Protein

Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center scientists have discovered a potential new drug that inhibits destructive cell signals that drive the growth of one-third of all cancers. The scientists showed they could block the growth of cultured colon cancer cells using this new compound, called cysmethynil. ...

A gene's first 'kiss' sets off that affair known as puberty

Puberty, that awkward phase when boys and girls are primed for their sexual reproductive years as men and women, appears to be triggered by the brain's own version of "It takes two to tango," whereby a signal literally gets turned on by a molecule that is produced by a gene aptly named KiSS-1. T...

Highest ever winter water temperatures recorded

...d more," Dr Cresswell says. The Leeuwin Current forms north of Australia and flows right around the western half of the country, meeting its better known cousin, the East Australian Current (EAC), at Tasmania. The exact location of this meeting point varies both seasonally and from year-to-year, dependi...

Marine microbes creating green waves in industry

...cals in particular - as a result of this search." Microorganisms account for more than 95 per cent of ocean biomass but relatively little is really known about them and their potential applications. The research team's search is for industrially relevant enzymes which will reduce waste and increase prod...

Navigating in the ocean of molecules

...about biological activity - if available - at the beginning of the navigation process. In this case, Scaffold Hunter only links the scaffolds that are known to display the same biological activity to the branches. As a result, these branches are very likely to bear fruit: active substances are probably als...

Carbon nanoparticles toxic to adult fruit flies but benign to young

...rent types of carbon nanoparticles corresponding with their commercial uses carbon black (a powder much like printer toner), C60 (spherical molecules known as carbon buckyballs, named for Buckminster Fuller's geodesic designs), single-walled carbon nanotubes, and multiwalled carbon nanotubes. Flies in the...

Bladder cells feel stretch

...ells have a sensor for stretch stimulation. Their finding was reported in the Journal of Biological Chemistry published on Aug 7, 2009. Bladder is known to release ATP that activates micturition reflex pathway during urine storage. However, it has been unknown how urothelial cells sense bladder distens...

Carnegie donates landmark clones to biology

... Palo Alto, CAWith the information explosion, it's remarkable that so little is known about the interactions that proteins have with each other and the protective membrane that surrounds a cell. These interactive, so-called membrane pro...

AGU journal highlights -- Aug. 6, 2009

...ey are transported from the troposphere to the stratosphere through what is known as the tropical tropopause layer (TTL). To better understand how compounds ...udies have focused on open regions. To examine how waves below the surface, known as internal waves, are modified by closely spaced submerged ridges, or sill...

Climbing to new heights in the forest canopy

...climbers like cats claw. Climbing plants in the first three categories exhibit a type of motion where the plant grows by revolving in large arcs, known as circumnutation, giving them the greatest likelihood of encountering a support. Exactly what allows the plants to circumnutate is still poorly-under...

First human gets new antibody aimed at hepatitis C virus

... activity of a human monoclonal antibody they developed that can neutralize the Hepatitis C virus (HCV). The first volunteer received the antibody known as MBL-HCV1 on July 28, 2009, and the study is now proceeding and will eventually involve 30 healthy subjects in a dose-escalation trial expected to c...

Symposium to discuss geoengineering to fight climate change at the ESA Annual Meeting

...e global scale, Jackson thinks that research should continue on safer ways to use geoengineering at a smaller scale. Geologic sequestration, sometimes known as CO2 capture and storage, takes CO2 out of the atmosphere and stores it in underground reservoirs. Jackson says that this solution has the potential...

Women often opt to surgically remove their breasts, ovaries to reduce cancer risk

...surgery among women with breast cancer and evaluated the impact of cancer risk, timing and age. Rate of increase was measured among 211 women with known unaffected BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation carriers. BRCA1 and BRCA2 are hereditary gene mutations that indicate an increased risk for developing breast cance...

Venomous sea snakes play heads or tails with their predators

...ter and are active predators, feeding on small fish found around coral reefs. All sea snakes have extremely potent venom which is among the most toxic known in all snake species. When hunting for food sea snakes probe crevices and coral formations, temporarily forcing them to drop their guard to threats...

Hormone levels contribute to stress resilience

...terone, or "DHEA" as it is commonly known, is a hormone that is secreted by the adrenal gland in response to stress. Although medical scientists have known for over a decade that DHEA provides beneficial, anti-stress effects in animals, they did not know until now whether this was also true for humans. ...

Lead-based consumer paint remains a global public health threat

...rticularly the large, multinational companies we analyzed with more depth in the current studyshould knowingly distribute a product that has long been known to be dangerous to people." Clark says calls for a global ban on the use of lead in paintssuch as the one in made in his 2006 paperappear to be h...

Pitt researchers find promising candidate protein for cancer prevention vaccines

...hool of Medicine. The results are reported this week in the online version of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . "Cyclin B1 is known to be produced in excess amounts in several kinds of cancer," she said. "While we were studying it, we noted that many healthy people already had an i...

La Jolla Institute discovers novel tumor suppressor

...ed that tumor production hinged on the PLC-beta 3's ability to block the action of STAT5, a transcription factor protein than can switch on many genes known to control cell proliferation, survival and, in the case of blood stem cells, to promote the development of myeloid cells. Myeloproliferative diseas...

Scientists open doors to diagnosis of emphysema

...sis. The study is published today in Nature Chemical Biology . The researchers present a new strategy for testing the activity of MMP12, an enzyme known to be involved in the development of emphysema. Emphysema is characterised by the damage and destruction of the alveoli, the tiny air-sacs of the lung...

Urban water ecology at the ESA annual meeting

...educes food supplies for fish Freshwater fish, especially stream fish, rely on terrestrial insects as a portion of their food supply. But little is known about their importance to fish in lakes, where the size and shape of a lake can determine how much its fish rely on shoreline food sources. Tessa Fran...

Stem cell 'daughters' lead to breast cancer

...o also heads the Familial Cancer Centre at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, said that now the importance of luminal progenitor cells in breast cancer was known it opened the way for the development of new drugs or therapies to treat breast cancer, one of the biggest causes of premature death in women. "BRCA...

Drug-proof zebrafish reveal secrets of addiction

...enes involved in pathways classically associated with reward, this gene set shows a striking enrichment in transcription factors that are specifically known for their involvement in brain development. Even more interestingly, as the authors demonstrate, several of these genes are expressed in neurogenic do...

August 2009 Geology and GSA Today media highlights

...n Geology: briny eruptions on Mars; the only basin known to have both a marine and terrestrial P-T boundary...ctor of the basin, making the Karoo the only basin known to have a Permian-Triassic boundary identified in ...r beneath the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico has been known for almost two decades. This crater, named after t...

Parasites ready to jump

... interference first came to light only a short time ago, but has already become a well established field of study. Thanks to more recent findings, the known repertoire of small RNAs has grown. As Frstemann stresses, "It is therefore particularly important to discriminate between the various molecular class...

National assessment done on potential invasive snail and slug pests in US

...uthored by snail/slug biologist Robert H. Cowie of the UH Manoa Center for Conservation Research and Training (CCRT) and his team. They evaluated all known snail and slug pests globally to determine which species would be of greatest concern if introduced nationally, in terms of their potential impacts on...

Scientists uncork a potential secret of red wine's health benefits

...mation. They found that resveratrol used a one-two punch to stop inflammation in the mice by preventing the body from creating two different molecules known to trigger inflammation, sphingosine kinase and phospholipase D. This finding suggests that resveratrol may be harnessable as a treatment for inflamma...

Leicester research paves way for first use in Europe of an insect to fight invasive plant

...between Japanese Knotweed and both Giant Knotweed and Russian Vine. The hybrid between Japanese Knotweed and Giant Knotweed (Bohemian Knotweed) is now known to be an important and hitherto under-recorded component of Japanese Knotweed populations. Fortunately for the inhabitants of these Islands the hybrid...

UCSF researchers identify new drug target for Kaposi's sarcoma

...ficult to attain. The new drug target, which is known as a protease dimer, could serve as a model for de...ceptor from being effective. Some viral enzymes known as proteases, however, including those for HIV and...ll as other members of this viral family. "All known herpes virus proteases are structurally similar," ...

Douglas-fir, geoducks make strange bedfellows in studying climate change

...tency of the ring patterns allows them to build a model and compare that to known climatic measurements. But when you add in a second species and compare...e and freshwater species. "When we associate rings from one species with known sea surface temperatures, we can account for almost 50 percent of the varia...

Reprogramming human cells without inserting genes

...anism. In the pluripotent state, several genes are known to be active, helping to control the stem cells. T...sity in Japan, which inserted extra copies of four known stem cell genes, including OCT4 and SOX2, into hum...um. (FGF2 is a naturally occurring protein that is known to be vital for maintaining the pluripotency of em...