Life Sciences and Chemistry

University of Michigan Kellogg Eye Center scientists have been studying a family whose members have an eye disease that looks like age-related macular degeneration (AMD), but that has a rarer pattern of inheritance that results in an exceptionally high incidence of the disease among family members in the study.

In the August issue of Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science (IOVS), Kellogg scientist Radha Ayyagari, Ph.D., and her collaborators from the U-M and other institutions identify

Scientists often look to nature for inspiration in the search for ways to make new materials. A new study of the clamworm, an intertidal creature, shows that it has jaws made partly of zinc, making them strong, stiff and tough –– fundamental properties by which all materials are evaluated.

The properties of the clamworm jaws are described in this week´s online publication of the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences (PNAS). The research began with questions by scientists a

The promise of the genomics revolution – the ability to compare important genes and proteins from many different organisms – is that such detailed knowledge will produce new scientific insights that will improve human quality of life. In work on a key human enzyme, PBGS (porphobilinogen synthase), the laboratory of Fox Chase Cancer Center scientist Eileen K. Jaffe, Ph.D., has characterized a rare mutation that results in an unprecedented rearrangement of the enzyme´s structure. The discovery provides

Since the time when humans first learned to record their thoughts in written form, codes have kept sensitive information from prying eyes. But conveying information through a code requires someone who can read it as well as write it. The same is true for one of nature´s methods for transmitting information that activates or silences a gene: the “histone code.”

First formally proposed in 2000 by C. David Allis, Ph.D., and his postdoctoral fellow Brian Strahl, Ph.D., the histone code is

Scientists have inactivated almost three-quarters of all genes in the genome of Arabidopsis thaliana, a species widely used in plant research. The feat, which results in the largest so-called “knockout” gene collection of a complex multi-cellular organism, now allows researchers to study the function of each of those genes individually or together.

The findings, published in the August 1 issue of the journal Science, mark an important milestone in the field of plant genomics. Follow

Finding will aid drug design to combat depression, stroke and diabetes. Scientists are a step closer to understanding how essential nutrients, vitamins and minerals are ferried into cells.

For the first time, a member of the Major Facilitator Superfamily (MFS) of transport proteins, found in almost every form of life, has been visualised by researchers from Imperial College London and the University of California, Los Angeles.

Reporting in Science today, the researchers reve