Life Sciences and Chemistry

Ears do more than hear; they also control balance and our perception of gravity and motion. An international team of scientists including David E. Bergstrom and John C. Schimenti, at The Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor; and Rainer Paffenholz and Gabriele Stumm at Ingenium Pharmaceuticals AG in Martinsried, Germany, identified for the first time a protein whose enzymatic function is indispensable for development of this balance system.

The scientists had known that mice with the head tilt m

Viruses could become the next generation of environmentally friendly decontaminants, replacing harmful chemicals like chlorine dioxide in cleaning up areas exposed to anthrax spores, according to findings released today at the American Society for Microbiology’s Biodefense Research Meeting. Researchers from the Biological Defense Research Directorate in Rockville, Maryland, the Defense Science Technology Laboratory in the United Kingdom, and the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute pre

After successfully turning cells taken from human fat into different cell types, Duke University Medical Center researchers have now demonstrated that these specific cells are truly adult stem cells with multiple potential, instead of being a mixture of different types of cells, each with a more limited destiny.

During the past three years, the Duke researchers exposed cells taken from human liposuction procedures to different cocktails of nutrients and vitamins, and “reprogrammed” them to

Method is First to Show Three Genes at Once in Higher Animals

Using chicken embryos and colorful fluorescent dyes, University of Utah scientists have demonstrated for the first time in a higher animal that it is possible to simultaneously show three genes working within an embryo, body tissue or even a single cell.

“This method allows us to visualize how embryos develop in more detail and with greater clarity than ever before,” says physician Teri Jo Mauch, a pediatric kidney

In work that may lead to better understanding of genetic diseases, researchers at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard show that baker’s yeast was created hundreds of millions of years ago when its ancestor temporarily became a kind of super-organism with twice the usual number of chromosomes and an increased potential to evolve.

The study is by postdoctoral fellow and lead author Manolis Kellis of the Broad (rhymes with “code”) Institute; Eric S. Lander, Broad director; and Bruce W.

Cutting corn down to size

A team of scientists that includes a Washington University in St. Louis biologist, has evaluated and validated a gene-enrichment strategy for genome sequencing and has reported a major advance in sequencing large genomes. The team showed a six-fold reduction of the effective size of the Zea mays (maize or corn) genome while creating a four-fold increase in the gene identification rate when compared to standard whole-genome sequencing methods.

A team