Life Sciences and Chemistry

The researchers — led by Lokesh Joshi, an ASU associate professor in the Harrington Department of Bioengineering of the Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering and a member of the Arizona BioDesign Institute — have found a pathway whereby plants can generate human-like proteins. This discovery could lead to an effective means of producing proteins that are medically important and do so with a method that could be effective and less expensive than current methods, Joshi said.

“The discovery ha

Purdue University scientists have peered inside a virus and visualized for the first time how it produces and exports genetic materials into a host cell, an advance in fundamental research that also could have implications for the development of antiviral agents.

Using improved microscope technology, a team including Purdue’s Timothy S. Baker and a colleague at Harvard has determined the structure of a reovirus (short for “respiratory enteric orphan” virus) down to the 7.6-angstrom scale, be

By studying the “memory” of the respiratory system, a group of researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison have identified a key player – a protein called BDNF that’s involved in learning – responsible for the body’s ability to keep breathing properly, despite the challenges it may face.

The findings, published Dec. 14 in the online edition of Nature Neuroscience, could provide ideas of new drug targets, which could lead to new treatments for or ways to prevent a number of

Researchers at Ohio State University have created a DNA gene chip that contains thousands of the genes for a horse and one of the first gene chips for a domestic animal.

The new chip houses more than 3,200 expressed horse genes on a sliver of glass about the size of a postage stamp. When the researchers began developing this chip two years ago, only 200 horse genes were known.

This new chip will allow researchers to scan an individual horses genes at once to see which ones are acti

New research identifies the molecular mechanisms that keep a plant’s circadian clock running on a 24-hour schedule.

The study, reported this week in the journal Nature, is the first to describe the physical connection between two molecular components -– genes called TOC1 and ZTL — that keep a plant’s “clock” running at the right speed. Scientists have spent more than a decade trying to understand the interactions between the components that regulate a plant’s timing.

Knowin

As New Year’s Eve approaches and you prepare to pop open that champagne bottle, keep your fingers crossed for small bubbles … and lots of them.

That long train of tiny, rising bubbles is the key to the drink’s flavor and aroma, scientists say. And the smaller the bubbles, the better, according to the people who should know, researchers in the Champagne region of France, home to the famous vineyards that gave birth to the bubbly wine.

“Our ultimate goal is to cre