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Latest Biology Articles, News & Current Events

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Category: Biology

A scientist has discovered an ancient extinct creature with 'scissor hand-like' claws in fossil records and has named it in honour of his favourite movie star.

Full articleMay 16, 2013 04:57 PM1037 views
Category: Biotechnology


DNA-tethered nanorods link up like rungs on a ribbonlike ladder—a new mechanism for linear self-assembly that may be unique to the nanoscale.
Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory have discovered that DNA "linker" strands coax nano-sized rods to line up in way unlike any other spontaneous arrangement of rod-shaped objects. The arrangement-with the rods forming "rungs" on ladder-like ribbons linked by multiple DNA strands-results from the collective interactions of the flexible DNA tethers and may be unique to the nanoscale. The research, described in a paper published online in ACS Nano, a journal of the American Chemical Society, could result in the fabrication of new nanostructured materials with desired properties.

Full articleMay 16, 2013 04:57 PM604 views
Category: Stem Cell Research


This image shows Matthias Hebrok, Ph.D., University of California, San Francisco.
Raising hopes for cell-based therapies, UC San Francisco researchers have created the first functioning human thymus tissue from embryonic stem cells in the laboratory. The researchers showed that, in mice, the tissue can be used to foster the development of white blood cells the body needs to mount healthy immune responses and to prevent harmful autoimmune reactions.

Full articleMay 16, 2013 04:57 PM743 views
Category: Stem Cell Research

May 9, 2013, New York, NY and San Diego, CA – A large, multi-institutional research team involved in the NIH Epigenome Roadmap Project has published a sweeping analysis in the current issue of the journal Cell of how genes are turned on and off to direct early human development. Led by Bing Ren of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, Joseph Ecker of The Salk Institute for Biological Studies and James Thomson of the Morgridge Institute for Research, the scientists also describe novel genetic phenomena likely to play a pivotal role not only in the genesis of the embryo, but that of cancer as well. Their publicly available data, the result of more than four years of experimentation and analysis, will contribute significantly to virtually every subfield of the biomedical sciences.

Full articleMay 11, 2013 05:33 AM1661 views
Category: Biology

Different brain areas are activated when we choose to suppress an emotion, compared to when we are instructed to inhibit an emotion, according a new study from the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and Ghent University.

Full articleMay 11, 2013 05:33 AM2988 views
Category: Bioinformatics

Children born with rare, inherited conditions known as Congenital Disorders of Glycosylation, or CDG, have mutations in one of the many enzymes the body uses to decorate its proteins and cells with sugars. Properly diagnosing a child with CDG and pinpointing the exact sugar gene that's mutated can be a huge relief for parents—they better understand what they're dealing with and doctors can sometimes use that information to develop a therapeutic approach. Whole-exome sequencing, an abbreviated form of whole-genome sequencing, is increasingly used as a diagnostic for CDG.

Full articleMay 11, 2013 05:32 AM1248 views
Category: AIDS & HIV

A team of NIH scientists has developed a new tool to identify broadly neutralizing antibodies (bNAbs) capable of preventing infection by the majority of HIV strains found around the globe, an advance that could help speed HIV vaccine research. Scientists have long studied HIV-infected individuals whose blood shows powerful neutralization activity because understanding how HIV bNAbs develop and attack the virus can yield clues for HIV vaccine design. But until now, available methods for analyzing blood samples did not easily yield specific information about the HIV bNAbs present or the parts of the virus they targeted. In addition, determining where and how HIV bNAbs bind to the virus has been a laborious process involving several complicated techniques and relatively large quantities of blood from individual donors.

Full articleMay 11, 2013 05:32 AM1139 views
Category: Biotechnology


This is the hand-held device for extracting DNA.
Take a swab of saliva from your mouth and within minutes your DNA could be ready for analysis and genome sequencing with the help of a new device.

Full articleMay 6, 2013 06:10 PM15352 views
Category: Bioinformatics

When Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) marine paleoecologist Marco Coolen was mining through vast amounts of genetic data from the Black Sea sediment record, he was amazed about the variety of past plankton species that left behind their genetic makeup (i.e., the plankton paleome).

Full articleMay 6, 2013 06:10 PM2468 views
Category: Bioinformatics

The U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (DOE JGI) is among the world leaders in sequencing the genomes of microbes, focusing on their potential applications in the fields of bioenergy and environment. As a national user facility, the DOE JGI is also focused on developing tools that more cost-effectively enable the assembly and analysis of the sequence that it, as well as other genome centers, generates.

Full articleMay 5, 2013 06:13 PM1598 views
Category: Molecular & Cell Biology

UCSF scientists controlled seizures in epileptic mice with a one-time transplantation of medial ganglionic eminence (MGE) cells, which inhibit signaling in overactive nerve circuits, into the hippocampus, a brain region associated with seizures, as well as with learning and memory. Other researchers had previously used different cell types in rodent cell transplantation experiments and failed to stop seizures.

Full articleMay 5, 2013 06:13 PM3151 views
Category: Bioinformatics

A new study led by researchers from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in the UK has, for the first time, used genome sequencing technology to track the changes in a bacterial population following the introduction of a vaccine. The study follows how the population of pneumococcal bacteria changed following the introduction of the 'Prevnar' conjugate polysaccharide vaccine, which substantially reduced rates of pneumococcal disease across the U.S. The work demonstrates that the technology could be used in the future to monitor the effectiveness of vaccination or antibiotic use against different species of bacterial pathogens, and for characterizing new and emerging threats.

Full articleMay 5, 2013 06:13 PM1226 views
Category: Biotechnology


Scientists used 3-D printing to merge tissue and an antenna capable of receiving radio signals.
Scientists at Princeton University used off-the-shelf printing tools to create a functional ear that can "hear" radio frequencies far beyond the range of normal human capability.

Full articleMay 1, 2013 07:37 PM4128 views
Category: Bioinformatics

Endometrial tumors can be reclassified into distinct subtypes based partly on their genomic makeup and may respond to targeted drugs already being tested in clinical trials, according to a large-scale genomic analysis led by researchers at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and other centers within The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) Research Network.

Full articleMay 1, 2013 07:37 PM1716 views

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