Life Sciences and Chemistry

Researchers from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona have developed the first international server that allows the user to analyze genetic diversity on a large scale. The web service, published in the special edition of Nucleic Acids Research on bioinformatics, will facilitate research about the genetic basis of hereditary diseases. The server is called PDA (Pipeline Diversity Analysis) and for the first time biologists around the world can search for small variations in the genomes of different

In experiments with fruit flies, Johns Hopkins researchers have discovered how a key light-detecting molecule in the eye moves in response to changes in light intensity. Their finding adds to growing evidence that some creatures — and probably people — adapt to light not only by mechanically shrinking the pupil to physically limit how much light enters the eye, but also by a chemical response.

Building on their previous work showing that specific proteins in eye cells are redistributed i

Scientists from Novosibirsk are currently creating a pleasant and harmless vaccine – an edible one. So far, they managed to incorporate the protein gene – HIV antigen in tomatoes. The research is supported by International Science and Technology Center (ISTC).

All patients would be overjoyed to get edible vaccines, contained in vegetables and fruit. Imagine, a patient eats a vaccine and this way gets protected from a dangerous infection. However, this is not a fantasy, the fact being confir

Ohio State University engineers and their colleagues have successfully automated a particular medical test on a compact disc (CD) for the first time — and in a fraction of the normal time required using conventional equipment.

The ELISA biochemical test — one of the most widely used clinical, food safety, and environmental tests — normally takes hours or even days to perform manually. Using a specially designed CD, engineers performed the test automatically, and in only one hour.

A study of more than 2000 children of women with gestational diabetes (the diabetes that some women get during pregnancy) has revealed that obesity in mothers is one of the most decisive factors contributing to the appearance of congenital malformations in their children, even more so than the seriousness of the diabetes. The research, published in the european journal Diabetologia, has been carried out by a research team from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and Hospital de Sant Pau in Barcelo

A team of researchers from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) has discovered that transposons, small DNA sequences that travel through the genomes, can silence the genes adjacent to them by inducing a molecule called antisense RNA. This is a new mechanism for evolution that has been unknown until now. The research has been recently published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
Transposons are repeated DNA sequences that move through the genomes. For a l