Life Sciences and Chemistry

Purdue University scientists have found the glue that saltwater mussels use to affix themselves to rocks is a subject worth sticking to, both for its pure scientific interest and for its potential applications in medicine and industry.

Jonathan Wilker and his research group have discovered that the formation of mussel adhesive requires iron, a metal that has never before been found in such a biological function. While the discovery is valuable for its scientific merit, it also could impact

In many species, the reproductive cells of the germline can only form properly if certain mRNAs are prevented from translating into proteins until they have been transported to precise target locations in the egg and the appropriate developmental stage has been reached. In a study published in the January issue of Developmental Cell, members of the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology (CDB) Laboratory for Germline Development (Akira Nakamura, Team Leader) report that, in the fruit fly Drosophila, t

Researchers have discovered that iron in seawater is the key binding agent in the super-strong glues of the common blue mussel, Mytilus edulis. This is the first time researchers have determined that a metal such as iron is critical to forming an amorphous, biological material.

In addition to using the knowledge to develop safer alternatives for surgical and household glues, the researchers are looking at how to combat the glue to prevent damage to shipping vessels and the accidental transp

Probing the last genomic frontier of higher organisms, an international team of scientists has succeeded in sequencing a little understood – but critical – genetic domain in rice.

In doing so, the group, led by Jiming Jiang, a professor of horticulture at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and C. Robin Buell of the Institute for Genomic Research in Rockville, Md., has exposed a supposedly barren region of a rice chromosome known as the centromere. The work, published in the current (Jan.

Identifying the targets that bacterial viruses, or phages, use to halt bacterial growth and then screening against those targets for small molecule inhibitors that attack the same targets provides a unique platform for the discovery of novel antibiotics. Researchers from Montreal-based PhageTech, Inc. describe in the February issue of Nature Biotechnology this novel method for discovering new classes of antibiotics. The article is available on-line today at www.nature.com/nbt/.

“Over the co

The ability to analyze and defend against novel biological agents has been strengthened by the development of a new device that can monitor the metabolism of living cells in near real time.

“So far we have been lucky that terrorists have used well-known biological agents like anthrax and sarin gas,” says David Cliffel, assistant professor of chemistry at Vanderbilt University, who led the development group working under the auspices of the Vanderbilt Institute for Integrative Biosystems Res