Life Sciences and Chemistry

Scientists have determined a three-dimensional (3-D) molecular image of how anthrax toxin enters human cells, giving scientists more potential targets for blocking the toxin, the lethal part of anthrax bacteria. The finding also points to a possible way to design anthrax toxin molecules that selectively attack tumor cells, as described in the journal Nature published online July 4. The study, funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Healt

Female fruit flies sleep around. Nobody knows exactly why, but Nina Wedell of Leeds University’s school of biology aims to find out.

Conventional wisdom on animal mating strategies said that females sought male partners with healthy genes to pass on to offspring, but this theory is now discredited, as it does not explain all variations of behaviour.

Instead it has been found that females often mate with numerous partners and screen sperm so that only the most healthy is used. What

Scientists have made the first recordings of the human brain’s awareness of its own body, using the illusion of a strategically-placed rubber hand to trick the brain. Their findings shed light on disorders of self-perception such as schizophrenia, stroke and phantom limb syndrome, where sufferers may no longer recognize their own limbs or may experience pain from missing ones.

In the study published today in Science Express online, University College London’s (UCL) Dr Henrik Ehrsson, workin

Of course, not the crab itself, but its hepatopancreas, which is a gland performing functions of both liver and pancreas. And not an entire hepatopancreas, but only some of its enzymes isolated by the Moscow scientists supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (RFBR) and Foundation for Assistance to Small Innovative Enterprises (FASIE).

Doctor of chemical sciences Galina Rudenskaya from the Moscow State University and her colleagues from small enterprise TRINITA have made an im

European Research Commissioner Philippe Busquin today rejected stories in several media claiming he had called for genetic testing of all newborn babies in Europe. Mr Busquin said: “I have never advocated any such point of view. It is not the role nor the intention of the Commission to ask EU Member States to impose universal genetic screening of babies. Genetic testing is a matter of free choice and of ethical rules being decided by EU Member States. The Commission does not regulate ethics. I cert

Scientists in the Conway Institute of Biomolecular & Biomedical Research have restored the sight of blind zebrafish whose eyes failed to develop due to a genetic mutation. The findings, published this week in Developmental Biology, are exciting first steps on a long road to understanding eye diseases in humans.

Dr. Breandan Kennedy and his colleagues at the University of Washington, Seattle and the Hubrecht Laboratory in Utrecht, Netherlands first identified a family of eyeless fish. They th