It has been 20 years since Dolly the sheep was successfully cloned in Scotland, but cloning mammals remains a challenge. A new study by researchers from the U.S. and France of gene expression in developing clones now shows why most cloned embryos likely fail.
The naming of colors has long been a topic of interest in the study of human culture and cognition — revealing the link between perception, language, and the categorization of the natural world. A major question in the study of both anthropology and cognitive science is why the world’s languages show recurrent similarities in color naming. Linguists at Yale tracked the evolution of color terms across a large language tree in Australia in order to trace the history of these systems.
The fine art of mixing drug cocktails is incredibly complicated, with virtually infinite numbers of possible interactions and side effects. Now, a new model from the Weizmann Institute lab of Prof. Uri Alon lets scientists compare combinations of drugs to determine efficacy – a major step forward in personalized medicine.
In our recent study, we identified 19 “new” pieces of DNA — left by retroviruses that first infected our ancestors’ germlines hundreds of thousands of years ago –lurking between our own genes.
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have developed a novel strategy to reprogram cells from one type to another in a more efficient and less biased manner than previous methods.
NIBIB-funded researchers have used fast fMR Ito image rapidly fluctuating brain activity during human thought. fMRI measures changes in blood oxygenation, which were previously thought to be too slow to detect the subtle neuronal activity associated with higher order brain functions. The new discovery is a significant step towards realizing a central goal of neuroscience research: mapping the brain networks responsible for human cognitive functions such as perception, attention, and awareness.
In research conducted in Michigan Tech’s cloud chamber, Physics Professors Raymond Shaw, Will Cantrell and colleagues found that cleaner clouds also have a much wider variability in droplet size. And the way those droplets form could have serious implications for weather and climate change.
An Iowa State University veterinary research team has discovered the specific genetic mutations that make Campylobacter jejuni such a virulent strain of bacteria in ruminant animals such as sheep and cattle. The research could lead to a vaccine or new ways to control the bacteria.
In the largest study of its kind, UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers and colleagues in Europe identified a gene variant that suppresses the desire to drink alcohol.
Scientists at Washington University in St. Louis isolated an enzyme that controls the levels of two plant hormones simultaneously, linking the molecular pathways for growth and defense. Similar to animals, plants have evolved small molecules called hormones to control key events such as growth, reproduction and responses to infections.
If you could watch a molecule of medicine attaching to a cell receptor in extreme slow motion, they would look something like a space ship docking with a space station -- some twists, turns, sputters then locking together tight. With a new improvement to atomic force microscopy by Georgia Tech engineers, seeing this kind of detail is more likely to become possible.
It has long been known to science that women find it easier than men to multitask and switch between tasks. But identifying exactly which areas of male and female brains respond differently and why has so far been unclear.
The research team around Anton Zeilinger has succeeded in breaking two novel records while experimenting with so-called twisted particles of light. In one experiment, the scientists could show that the twist of light itself, i.e. the screw-like structure, is maintained over a free-space propagation of 143 kilometers, which could revolutionize future data transmission.
Microorganisms like bacteria and archaea play an indispensable ecological role in the global geochemical cycles. A research team led by ERC prizewinner Christa Schleper from the Department of Ecogenomics and Systems Biology at the University of Vienna succeeded in isolating the first ammonia-oxidizing archaeon from soil: "Nitrososphaera viennensis" - the "spherical ammonia oxidizer from Vienna". In the current issue of the renowned journal PNAS, the scientists present new results: They were able to detect all proteins that are active during ammonia oxidation – another important piece of the puzzle for the elucidation of the energy metabolism of Archaea.
Outbreaks of the mosquito-borne disease chikungunya appear to be driven by infections centered in and around the home, with women significantly more likely to become ill, suggests new research from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the Institut Pasteur in Paris and the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (icddr,b).
For the first time, scientists have prevented urinary tract infections in mice by vaccinating them with tiny molecules that UTI bacteria usually use to grab iron from their host and fuel the growth of bacteria in the bladder.
A computer scientist at Washington University in St. Louis has developed a way to coax cells to do natural things under unnatural circumstances, which could be useful for stem cell research, gene therapy and biofuel production.Michael Brent, the Henry Edwin Sever Professor of Engineering in the School of Engineering & Applied Science, has designed an algorithm, called NetSurgeon, that recommends genes to surgically remove from a cell’s genome to force it to perform a normal activity in a different environment or circumstance.
Scientists at the University of Chicago, New York University and Leiden University could eventually help create materials that resist breaking or crack in a predictable fashion.
The findings, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Sept. 27, were the result of experiments and computer simulations in which researchers examined the effects of varying the rigidity of a material. Using both a simulation and artificial structures called metamaterials, they found material failure can be continuously tuned through changes in its underlying rigidity.