Life Sciences and Chemistry

The work of two scientists over the last decade has almost doubled the number of described Australian semi-aquatic bug species.

With an estimated two thirds of Australia’s insects yet to be scientifically described, documenting and recording new species is no easy task.

Identifying the new species of semi-aquatic bugs saw Tom Weir, CSIRO Entomology, and Nils Andersen, Copenhagen University, examine more than 45,000 specimens from around Australia.

“Despite living on

Scientists have discovered that the heart of a carp keeps beating when it is starved of oxygen for five days. “This is the first time that a vertebrate heart has been shown to survive such prolonged periods without oxygen and actually keep beating at the same rate as when oxygen is available” says Jonathan Stecyk (Simon Fraser University), presenting his latest results at the annual SEB meeting in Edinburgh this week.

“If I were to take oxygen away from your heart it would die in two minutes

Protein molecules that help maintain a healthy body temperature, electrolyte balance, respiration, heart rate, and other critical functions, also appear to regulate weight and fertility, according to Yale researchers.

STAT3 proteins are regulatory molecules that signal cell functions for activating genes. When the STAT3 molecules are disrupted in mice, the animals either die before they are born, or overeat and become obese, diabetic and infertile, according to the study published in the Pro

When the gene, called Foxm1b, was deleted from liver cells in laboratory mice, the animals failed to develop tumors. Even when the researchers attempted to induce the formation of these tumors artificially, using a standard laboratory technique, the mice remained cancer free.

“To my knowledge, this is the first time a gene has been directly linked to the growth of cancer cells in live animals,” said Robert Costa, professor of biochemistry and molecular genetics in the UIC College of Medicine

Scientists have generated and begun to analyze the rat genome, paving the way for comparisons with the two other mammalian genomes sequenced so far — human, and mouse. The primary results of the Rat Genome Sequencing Project Consortium (RGSPC) are presented in the April 1 issue of Nature, and an additional thirty manuscripts describing further detailed analyses are contained in the April issue of the journal Genome Research.

The cover image of Genome Research (see end of release) was produ

Lab discovers way to keep short-lived catalysts active for longer than five months

Enzymes, the workhorses of chemical reactions in cells, lead short and brutal lives. They cleave and assemble proteins and metabolize compounds for a few hours, and then they are spent.

This sad fact of nature has limited the possibilities of harnessing enzymes as catalytic tools outside the cell, in uses that range from biosensing to toxic waste cleanup.

To increase the enzyme’s lon