Life Sciences and Chemistry

Department of Energy-funded researchers at the Institute for Biological Energy Alternatives (IBEA) have sequenced microbes in the Sargasso Sea and have discovered at least 1,800 new species and more than 1.2 million new genes. The results will be published in the journal Science. IBEA researchers’ discoveries include 782 new rhodopsin-like photoreceptor genes (only a few dozen have been characterized in microorganisms to date).

“What excites the Department and our Office of Science abo

Geneticists at the Duke Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy (IGSP) and the University of Basel have unveiled the complete genome sequence of the pathogenic plant fungus Ashbya gossypii, which infects agricultural crops including cotton and citrus fruits in the tropics. The fungus has the smallest genome yet characterized among free-living eukaryotes. Eukaryotes are the single-celled and multicellular organisms that include fungi, plants and animals.

The team — led by Fred Dietrich, Ph

Every cell in the body has what James Spudich, PhD, calls “a dynamic city plan” comprised of molecular highways, construction crews, street signs, cars, fuel and exhaust. Maintenance of this highly organized structure is fundamental to the development and function of all cells, Spudich says, and much of it can be understood by figuring out how the molecular motors do the work to keep cells orderly.

Spudich, biochemistry professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine, and Stanford ph

Researchers create first movie starring DNA, RNA, and protein

In 1958, five years after he helped discover the double helix structure of DNA, Francis Crick coined the term “Central Dogma” to characterize the all-important cellular processes whereby DNA is “transcribed” into RNA and RNA is “translated” into protein. Since then, researchers have typically examined individual aspects of the Central Dogma in isolation, by developing separate systems for studying transcription or translati

Scientists have believed for decades that the sequencing of the human genome would automatically yield the sequences of proteins, the functional products of genes, and thus lead to the unraveling of the mechanisms behind human cell biology and disease. However, a paper published in Science today by the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research (LICR) describes a novel cellular process that casts some doubt on the accepted paradigm of deducing a protein’s sequence from the DNA sequence of its gene.

A team of reproductive biologists from the United States and Japan has succeeded in fertilizing rabbit oocytes with “dead” freeze-dried rabbit sperm. The fertilized eggs continued to develop into embryos, some of which were transplanted into female rabbits.

The researchers—from the University of Connecticut, the University of Hawaii, and Hirosaki University—note that rabbit sperm share many similarities with human sperm, so their results suggest that the freeze-drying technique could be