Life Sciences and Chemistry

Tape-recorders allow us to record and analyze birds’ singing, but communicating with birds is more difficult

From time immemorial, people have listened to the birds singing, recognized birds by voices, have been able to guess their condition. Some people are able to successfully imitate bird’s singing. Only in the 50s of the last century, researchers managed to put the matter on a strictly scientific basis, when the tape equipment became available. Researchers started to record birds’

Thanks to biophysicists, statistics has reached the most intimate aspect of life – regulation of genes’ activity. Investigation on probabilistic aspects of molecular biology has been supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research and the INTAS Foundation.

Regulation of genes’ activity is one of the most important biological problems which has not been solved so far. A cell switches on and off its genes through multiple factors, which, if required, interact with certain sections of a

Research proves that use of antibacterial detergents in the home and in hospitals can reduce the development of superbugs, according to an article published in the May 2004 issue of Microbiology Today, the quarterly magazine for the Society for General Microbiology. Using antibacterial products, including disinfectants and antiseptics, has been found to lessen the chance of infection and as a result cut down on the use of antibiotics.

Modern over-use of antibacterial soaps and cleaners to co

Scientists have demonstrated the importance of programmed cell death in preventing inbreeding in plants, according to research published in Nature today. Researchers at the University of Birmingham School of Biosciences have found that self-incompatibility, an important mechanism in plants that prevents them fertilizing themselves with their own pollen, which is genetically controlled by products of the S locus, triggers programmed cell death in incompatible pollen coming into contact with the stigma

Amyloid fibers, those clumps of plaque-like proteins that clog up the brains of Alzheimer’s patients, have perplexed scientists with their robust structures. In laboratory experiments, they are able to withstand extreme heat and cold and powerful detergents that cripple most other proteins. The fibers are in fact so tough that researchers now are exploring ways that they can be used in nanoscale industrial applications. While they are not necessarily the cause of Alzheimer’s, they are assoc

Scientists have found that living cells will sometimes “shoot the messenger” as a way to halt production of certain proteins

The study, published in the May 21 issue of the journal Molecular Cell, shows that cells sometimes destroy the chemical messages that contain information for making proteins even as the messages are being “read.” The work was done by scientists at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Resea