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Whole genome fine map of rice completed

After the completion of a draft sequence of the Chinese hybrid rice genome, which was published in the Journal Science in 2002, CAS researchers have recently finished the fine map of the rice genome. In an article published by the recent issue of PLoS Biology (Vol.3 Issue 2, 2005), scientists led by the Beijing Institute of Genomics (BIG) reported a "much improved, near-complete genome analysis o...

GenMAPP 2.0 released

Glia appear essential for 'hair cells'responsible for hearing and balance. Traditionally viewed as supportingactors, cells known as glia may be essential for the normal developmentof nerve cells responsible for hearing and balance, according to newUniversity of Utah research. The study is reported in the January 6,2005 issue of Neuron and is co-authored by scientists at the Universityof Was...

UF Researchers Map Bacterial Proteins That Cause Tooth Loss

The human mouth teems with millions of enamel-eroding, gum-inflaming microbes. Now scientists have...

International HapMap consortium expands mapping effort

The International HapMap Consortium, boosted by an additional $3.3 million in public-private support, today announced plans to create an even more powerful map of human genetic variation than originally envisioned. The map will accelerate the discovery of genes related to common diseases, such as asthma, cancer, diabetes and heart disease. When the project was launched in October 2002, th...

Computational Method Speeds Mapping of Cell Signaling Networks

For decades, scientists have been studying how external information gets transmitted from outside of cells to the control centers inside them that trigger particular responses. But cell signaling networks are so complex that mapping them has been a slow, arduous process. Now, a research team from Stanford, MIT and Harvard has developed a new method for charting cellular signaling networks...

Brain-mapping technique aids understanding of sleep, wakefulness

The power of a new technique to map connections among nerve cells in the brain has a UT Southwestern Medical Center scientist dreaming of solving the mysteries of sleep. By tracking which nerve cells in the mouse brain stimulate others, researchers in Japan and at UT Southwestern found that a type of neuron responsible for keeping animals awake receives inhibitory signals from neurons act...

CoPub Mapper: mining MEDLINE based on search term co-publication

High throughput microarray analyses result in many differentially expressed genes that are potentially responsible for the biological process of interest. In order to identify biological similarities between genes, publications from MEDLINE were identified in which pairs of gene names and combinations of gene name with specific keywords were co-mentioned. MEDLINE search strings for 15,621...

Whole genome promoter mapping - Human Genome Project v2.0?

Investigators from the University California, San Diego (UCSD) Branch of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research (LICR) and NimbleGen Systems have developed an efficient method to identify thousands of regulatory sequences in the human genome, according to a study published today in Nature. Genes are defined by their ability to generate a functional product. Thus the 'promoter' - a DNA se...

Scientists map the world for nature conservation

For years, experts have been calling for an improved database that would enable them to develop more effective global nature conservation strategies. Botanists at the University of Bonn have now taken a major step in this direction with the publication, in the Journal of Biogeography, of a world map of plant biodiversity. The atlas is arranged in 867 zones, known as ecoregions. "This makes...

U of T researchers map role of Epstein-Barr virus in cancer

Researchers at the University of Toronto have mapped the molecular details that show how a viral protein coded in the Epstein-Barr virus immortalizes cells and causes them to continuously grow, thereby predisposing people to certain types of cancer. "Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) is one of the most common human viruses in the world and is strongly linked to certain b-cell cancers like Burkitt's...

Map of life on Earth could be used on Mars

A geologist from Washington University in St. Louis is developing new techniques to render a more coherent story of how primitive life arose and diverged on Earth ?with implications for Mars. Carrine Blank Ph.D., Washington University assistant professor of earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences, has some insight concerning terrestrial microbes that could lead to provocative conclusi...

Mapping neuron connections in the brain

The human brain contains from 10 to 100 billion neurons, and each has hundreds of connections with neighboring neurons. Making sense of these intricate connections is essential to understanding brain function, and the task is a monumental one. Thanks to a new theoretical approach to mapping neuron connectivity published in PLoS Computational Biology by Bagrat Amirikian, a researcher at the...

NYU biologists map out early stages of embryo formation

A team of genomic researchers headed by biologists at New York University's Center for Comparative Functional Genomics, in collaboration with researchers at Harvard University, the Max Planck Institute, and Cenix Biosciences, has mapped out a preliminary molecular diagram of the early stages of embryo formation, offering for the first time a global look at how a single cell begins its path into a...

First Whole Genome Map of Genetic Variability in Parkinson’s Disease

In findings with implications for pandemic influenza, a new study reports for the first time that a less-virulent strain of avian influenza virus can spread from poultry to humans. The research appears in the October 1 issue of The Journal of Infectious Diseases, now available online. Crossing the species barrier is an important step in the development of a flu virus with pandemic potenti...

Mammalian Transcriptome Mapped

The FANTOM Consortium for Genome Exploration Research Group, a large international collection of scientists that includes researchers at The Scripps Research Institute's Florida campus, is reporting the results of a massive multi-year project to map the mammalian "transcriptome" in this week's issue of the journal Science. The transcriptome, or transcriptional landscape as it is sometimes...

Sperm trading can resolve hermaphrodite mating conflicts

By directly manipulating mating performance in a tropical sea slug, Chelidonura hirundinina, researchers of the University of Tbingen have now shed light on the bizarre reproductive conflicts encountered by hermaphroditic animals. In some hermaphroditic species, such as C. hirundinina, mating partners may insist on copulating as a "male," "female," or both, resulting in unique biological conflict...

Scientists map one of biology's critical light-sensing structures

For plants, the ability to accurately sense light governs everything from seed germination, photosynthesis and pigmentation to patterns of growth and flowering. Now, for the first time, scientists have obtained a detailed map of one of biology's most important light detectors, a protein found in many species across life's plant, fungal, and bacterial kingdoms. By resolving the three-dimens...

Lateral thinking produces first map of gene transmission

A University of Queensland study mapping the evolution of genes has shed light on the role of gene transfer in bacterial diseases. Dr Robert Beiko, Professor Mark Ragan and Mr Timothy Harlow examined the genomes of 144...

Mapping alcohol brain damage

UQ biochemists are working with American researchers to pinpoint why only some parts of the brain are damaged in alcoholics. Chronic alcohol...

New maps reveal true extent of human footprint on Earth

As global populations swell, farmers are cultivating more and more land in a desperate bid to keep pace with the ever-intensifying needs of humans. As a result, agricultural activity now dominates more than a third of the Earth's landscape and has emerged as one of the central forces of global environmental change, say scientists at the Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment...

Researchers map of genetic variations implicated in disease

Sequence differences in less than 0.2% of the 3-billion-base human genome play a vital role in a bewildering variety of human disease. Today, researchers from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and the Cambridge University's Cambridge Institute for Medical Research, together with international colleagues report in PLoS Genetics their detailed maps of differences implicated in disease as well as...

Biologists develop genome-wide map of miRNA-mRNA interactions

Researchers at New York University's Center for Comparative Functional Genomics and the University of California, Berkeley have used computational analyses to predict a genome-wide map of microRNA (miRNA) targets in the animal model organism, Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans). MicroRNAs bind to messenger RNA (mRNA) in a specific section, called 3'UTR, and are known to regulate them. Parts of th...

Chemical signaling helps regulate sensory map formation in the brain

Researchers from the University of Chicago have uncovered an important mechanism used by the developing brain to pattern nerve connections in the part of the brain that interprets visual signals. In the process, they have provided the first experimental evidence for a decades-old model of how nerve cells establish distant connections in a way that can consistently relay spatial information....

Researchers map out networks that determine cell fate

A two-step process appears to regulate cell fate decisions for many types of developing cells, according to researchers from the University of Chicago. This finding sheds light on a puzzling behavior. For some differentiating stem cells, the first step leads not to a final decision but to a new choice. In response to the initial chemical signal, these cells take on the genetic signatu...

Mapping the protein world

In the early days of X-ray crystallography obtaining a three-dimensional model of a protein required wire models, screws, bolts and years of tedious calculations by hand. Today macromolecular models are built by computers ?thanks to sophisticated software and in particular a package called ARP/wARP. Developed by Victor Lamzin at the Hamburg Outstation of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory...

DOE publishes research roadmap for developing cleaner fuels

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today released an ambitious new research agenda for the development of cellulosic ethanol as an alternative to gasoline. The 200-page scientific "roadmap" cites recent advances in biotechnology that have made cost-effective production of ethanol from cellulose, or inedible plant fiber, an attainable goal. The report outlines a detailed research plan for devel...

Acid rain causing decline in sugar maples, say researchers

Acid rain, the environmental consequence of burning fossil fuels, running factories and driving cars, has altered soils and reduced the number of sugar maple trees growing in the Northeast, according to a new study led by Cornell University researchers. The sugar maple is the most economically valuable tree species in the eastern United States because of its high-priced lumber, syrup and...

Genetic 'roadmap' charts links between drugs and human disease

A research team led by scientists at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard announced today the development of a new kind of genetic "roadmap" that can connect human diseases with potential drugs to treat them, as well as predict how new drugs work in human cells. Called the "Connectivity Map," the new tool and its uses are described in the September 29 issue of Science and in separate publicatio...

Researchers map spread of pathogens in the human body

Researchers at the University of Cambridge have discovered a new, more accurate, method of mapping how bacteria spread within the body, a breakthrough that could lead to more effective treatments and prevention of certain bacterial infections. Dr. Pietro Mastroeni, Professor Duncan Maskell at the Centre for Veterinary Science, and their teams have pioneered the integration of mathematical...

New technology used to construct the first map of structural variation in the human genome

Beyond the simple stream of one-letter characters in the human genome sequence lies a complex, higher-order code. In order to decipher this level of architecture, scientists have developed powerful new experimental and algorithmic methods to detect copy number variants (CNVs)--defined as large deletions and duplications of DNA segments. These technologies--reported today in the journal Genom...

UCSD researchers create roadmap to integrin activation

Calling it an important technical advance in the study of the complex receptors and pathways of the body's cellular system, researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine have reconstructed the signaling pathways that impact activation of a receptor that is critical to the control of bleeding and to the thrombosis that occurs in heart attacks and strokes. <p...

Mapping the mouse genome

In a new study published online this week in the open access journal PLoS Biology, Sagiv Shifman, Jonathan Flint, and colleagues present a high resolution genetic map for the mouse genome--one of the most detailed genetic maps now available aside from that for humans. To create this map, they used two groups of mice: one consisting of outbred, heterogeneous stock (HS) and the other of re...

RNA map provides first comprehensive understanding of alternative splicing

It's biology's version of the director's cut. In much the same way that numerous films could be stitched together from a single reel of raw footage, a molecular process called alternative splicing enables a single gene to produce multiple proteins. Now a new RNA map, created by a team of researchers at Rockefeller University and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and announced in the journal Nat...

Brown scientists map structure of DNA-doctoring protein complex

More than half of the human genome is made up of bits of mobile DNA, which can travel inside the body and insert genes into the chromosomes of target cells. This DNA doctoring not only shapes species over time, it also spreads antibiotic resistance and is used by bacteria that spread Lyme disease and by viruses linked to certain forms of cancer. Last year in Nature, scientists working in...

Global malaria map key weapon in fight against malaria, scientists say

Information on the global burden of malaria remains the subject of "best guesses," and as a result resource allocation for malaria control remains "driven by perceptions and politics, rather than an objective assessment of need," say two prominent malaria researchers in PLoS Medicine. Simon Hay and Robert Snow (Kenya Medical Research Institute and University of Oxford), say that it has bee...

Comprehensive model is first to map protein folding at atomic level

Scientists at Harvard University have developed a computer model that, for the first time, can fully map and predict how small proteins fold into three-dimensional, biologically active shapes. The work could help researchers better understand the abnormal protein aggregation underlying some devastating diseases, as well as how natural proteins evolved and how proteins recognize correct biochemica...

Global map shows new patterns of extinction risk

The most detailed world map of mammals, birds and amphibians ever produced shows that endangered species from these groups do not inhabit the same geographical areas, says new research published today. Contrary to conservationists' previous assumptions, the map shows conclusively that geographical areas with a high concentration of endangered species from one group, do not necessarily hav...

Cancer scientists create 'human' leukemia process to map how disease begins, progresses

Cancer researchers led by Dr. John Dick at Ontario Cancer Institute (OCI) have developed a method to convert normal human blood cells into "human" leukemia stem cells. The converted cells, when transplanted into special mice that permit the growth of human cells, can replicate the entire disease process from the very moment it begins. The findings are published in the journal Science. Dr...

Scientists map air pollution using corn grown in US fields

Scientists at UC Irvine have mapped fossil fuel air pollution in the United States by analyzing corn collected from nearly 70 locations nationwide. This novel way to measure carbon dioxide produced by burning coal, oil and natural gas will help atmospheric scientists better understand where pollution is located and how it mixes and moves in the air. Tracking fossil-fuel-emitted carbon di...

Biologists produce global map of plant biodiversity

Biologists at the University of California, San Diego and the University of Bonn in Germany have produced a global map of estimated plant species richness. Covering several hundred thousand species, the scientists say their global map is the most extensive map of the distribution of biodiversity on Earth to date. The map, which accompanies a study published in this week's early online issu...