Agarose gel electrophoresis" Most teenagers wouldn’t have a clue what this scientific term means, but middle school student Andrew Trigiano knows the protocol inside and out. When Andrew was 12, his father Robert Trigiano, a professor at the University of Tennessee, was looking for an interesting science project for his son. Setting out to compare differences in popular brands of Easter egg dyes, Trigiano’s project soon grew into a full-blown scientific study and set of replicable classroom experiments.

The post-university years can start out tough. The good news: it gets better.

Cell division is essential to life, but the mechanism by which emerging daughter cells organize and divvy up their genetic endowments is little understood. In a new study, researchers at the University of Illinois and Columbia University report on how a key motor protein orchestrates chromosome movements at a critical stage of cell division.

Neuroscientists at Johns Hopkins are a step closer to understanding pain sensitivity - specifically why it’s variable instead of constant - having identified a gene that regulates a heat-activated molecular sensor.

A team of Canadian researchers has completed a massive survey of the network of protein complexes that orchestrate the fundamental processes of life. In the online edition of the journal Science, researchers from the Université de Montréal describe protein complexes and networks of complexes never before observed – including two implicated in the normal mechanisms by which cells divide and proliferate and another that controls recycling of the molecular building blocks of life called autophagy.

Researchers at the University of New Hampshire Glycomics Center have helped identify a specific carbohydrate structure that confers anti-inflammatory activity to a glycoprotein antibody that could lead to improved treatment of autoimmune diseases like lupus or rheumatoid arthritis. The study, reported in a recent edition of the journal Science, was led by immunologist Jeffrey Ravetch of Rockefeller University.

RNA is best known as a working copy of the DNA sequence of genes. In this role, it’s a carrier of the genes’ instructions to the cell, which manufactures proteins according to information in the RNA molecule.

By inducing a specific gene to increase expression of a key enzyme, vitamin D protects healthy prostate cells from the damage and injuries that can lead to cancer, University of Rochester Medical Center researchers report.