Life Sciences and Chemistry

The life expectancy of fruit flies increases an average of 50 percent when signals within cells of fat tissue are blocked or altered, new Brown University research shows. Published in the current issue of Nature, results of the study suggest that reduced levels of insulin in one tissue regulates insulin throughout the body to slow aging – a finding that brings science one step closer to cracking the longevity code.

When the chemical messages sent by an insulin-like hormone are reduced

Sitting blindfolded with a device equipped with 144 pixels in his mouth, any journalist would wonder about his career choice. But after a few minutes of experimentation, you have to recognize that the system developed by neuropsychologist Maurice Ptito of Université de Montréal, together with colleagues in Denmark and the United States , to allow blind people to “see with their tongue” appears strangely effective. In just the first few minutes, the subject is able to build up a fairly clear picture o

University of California, San Diego neurobiologists have uncovered evidence that sheds light on the long-standing mystery of how the brain makes sense of the information contained in electrical impulses sent to it by millions of neurons from the body.

In a paper published this week in the early on-line version of the journal Nature, a UCSD team led by Massimo Scanziani explains how neurons, or nerve cells, in the brain sort out information before deciding how to respond. The paper will appea

Scientists in the department of molecular biophysics and biochemistry at Yale revealed the crystal structure of the first described enzymatic RNA – what it looks like and how it reacts – in the journal Nature.

Scott Strobel, professor and principal investigator of the study and his research team at Yale, used X-ray crystallography to image the self-splicing group-I intron and the associations it makes as it reacts. The image shows an interaction with metal ions and the alignment of the RNA m

Regulates neighboring gene simply by being switched on

In a region of DNA long considered a genetic wasteland, Harvard Medical School researchers have discovered a new class of gene. Most genes carry out their tasks by making a product-a protein or enzyme. This is true of those that provide the body’s raw materials, the structural genes, and those that control other genes’ activities, the regulatory genes. The new one, found in yeast, does not produce a protein. It performs

Neurobiologists at the University of California, San Diego have discovered that altering electrical activity in nerve cells can change the chemical messengers the cells generate to communicate with other cells, a finding that may one day lead to new treatments for mood and learning disorders.

In a study published in the June 3rd issue of the journal Nature, a team led by UCSD professor of biology Nicholas Spitzer shows that manipulating the electrical activity of developing nerve cells can