Life Sciences and Chemistry

A group of researchers from The Scripps Research Institute has identified a small synthetic molecule that can induce a cell to undergo dedifferentiation – to move backwards developmentally from its current state to form its own precursor cell.
This compound, named reversine, causes cells which are normally programmed to form muscles to undergo reverse differentiation – retreat along their differentiation pathway and turn into precursor cells.

These precursor cells are multipotent; that

Size matters, and colder temperatures make things bigger! This is true not just for most large furry animals and for birds, but also for the microscopic plants and animals that are at the base of the ocean’s food chain.

Scientists have long known that animals and plants are usually larger when they grow in colder environments. Now, for the first time David Atkinson, Ben Ciotti, and David Montagnes, from the University of Liverpool’s School of Biological Sciences, have found that this o

Biologists from the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research have demonstrated that desert dust promotes the growth of algae. Scientists had already assumed that the iron in desert dust stimulated algal growth, but this has now been demonstrated for the first time. The researchers have published their findings in the December issue of the Journal of Phycology.

The biologists cultured two species of diatoms in seawater originating from the iron-depleted Southern Ocean, the sea around the

This year, Roderick MacKinnon was recognized for working out the atomic structure of an ion channel and Peter Agre for discovering that a major protein found in red blood cells functions primarily as a water channel. Agre went on to establish the family of related channels, which he named “aquaporins.” Solving the structure of these channels provided a platform for exploring the underlying molecular mechanisms that allow the proteins to function as filters and maintain osmotic equilibrium. Robert Str

While the controversy surrounding the ethics of stem cell research shows no signs of abating, scientists continue to demonstrate the promise of stem cell–derived therapies for a wide range of degenerative diseases. The hope is that stem cells, which retain a unique “pluripotent” ability to morph into any of the 200 cell types of the human body, could be used to repair or replace damaged or diseased tissue. However, little is known about the molecular events that trigger this differentiation of stem c

Nearly 99 percent alike in genetic makeup, chimpanzees and humans might be even more similar were it not for what researchers call “lifestyle” changes in the 6 million years that separate us from a common ancestor. Specifically, two key differences are how humans and chimps perceive smells and what we eat.

A massive gene-comparison project involving two Cornell University scientists, and reported in the latest issue of the journal Science (Dec. 12, 2003), found these and many other differen