Life Sciences and Chemistry

Advances in an area widely regarded in scientific circles as the ’next big thing’ – RNA interference (RNAi) – will be the major focus of a CSIRO-hosted conference on the Gold Coast in September.

The chairman of the ’Horizons in Livestock Sciences’ conference, CSIRO’s Dr Tim Doran, says RNAi research has major implications for plant, animal and human health.

“Since RNAi was first described in the 1990s, the technology has been rapidly adopted in laboratories

Microbes researchers highlight drawbacks of antibiotics

Bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics can live in the human intestines for at least one year. Professor Charlotta Edlund from the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden, and Research Professor Pentti Huovinen from the National Public Health Institute in Turku, Finland, are keen to highlight the risks involved in the excessive use of antibiotics.

In their research funded by the Academy of Finland, the two profess

A cell responds to pollutants – such as dioxin – via intricate and complex biochemical pathways beginning with the interaction of the pollutant molecule with a cell surface receptor. Christopher Bradfield and colleagues used yeast as a model system to elucidate the steps involved in the pathway that regulates vertebrate cell response to dioxin, the aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AHR) signal transduction pathway. To assess the molecules and pathways involved in the AHR pathway, the research group studied

Wolbachia have a thing against males. A member of one of the most diverse groups of bacteria, called Proteobacteria, this parasitic “endosymbiont” lives inside the reproductive cells of a wide variety of the nearly one million species of arthropods, including insects, spiders, and crustaceans.

Wolbachia’s effects range from beneficial to pathological, but if the host is male, the infection often turns out badly. The reason is the Wolbachia are transmitted through females, and to increase th

Essential for normal central nervous system function, dopamine signaling mediates physiological functions as diverse as movement and lactation. The dopamine transporter (DAT) is involved in terminating dopamine signaling by removing the dopamine chemical messenger molecules from nerve synapses and returning them into the releasing neurons (a process called reuptake). DAT can also bind amphetamine, cocaine, and other psychostimulants, which inhibit dopamine reuptake, and, in the case of amphetamine, a

Voles are pedestrians, too, and need just as much help crossing the road as the big animals, says new research from the University of Alberta.

“There has been a mindset that bigger is better–driven by research on large mammals and especially bears,” said Dr. Colleen Cassady St. Clair, from the Department of Biological Sciences. “This research shows that small affordable culverts, which can be placed with high frequencies while building roads, are very effective conduits for small mammals.