Life Sciences and Chemistry

Remain a hematopoetic stem cell or become a specialized blood cell?

Hematopoietic stem cells, the mother of all blood cells, face a fundamental dilemma in their lives.

Each must either remain a hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) by renewing itself or it must transform into one of eight specialized types of blood cells, such as a red blood cell, a white blood cell or a platelet.

Until recently, scientists didn’t know how the essential cells, which exist in limited a

UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas researchers have taken the first step in defining the sites in human genes most prone to mutation, which eventually could lead to discovery of the genetic bases of many human diseases.

Their work will appear in an upcoming issue of the journal Gene and is currently available online.

Dr. Harold “Skip” Garner, professor of biochemistry and internal medicine, and his colleagues made their discovery while mining databases of coding single nucle

’Lizards gone wild’

Despite social notions of race, human populations around the world are genetically so similar that geneticists find no different sub-species among them. The genetic continuity of human populations is the exception rather than the rule for most animal species, however.

Richard Glor, graduate evolutionary biology student in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, has found extensive genetic differentiation among populations of numero

’The brain’s Timex’

Getting over jet lag may be as simple as changing the temperature –your brain temperature, that is.

That’s a theory proposed by Erik Herzog, Ph.D. assistant professor of biology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. Herzog has found that the biological clocks of rats and mice respond directly to temperature changes.

Biological clocks, which drive circadian rhythms, are found in almost every living organis

Birds do it, bees do it, and yes, even chimpanzees do it. They all dote on their young. And now a new theory of aging suggests that nurturing offspring is just as important as fertility and reproduction for the evolution of a species’ longevity and long-term survival.

The new theory, proposed by Ronald D. Lee, Ph.D., of University of California, Berkeley, suggests that natural selection favors animals capable of devoting energy and resources to insuring survival of the next generation.

An international project to co-ordinate human stem cell research across the globe was agreed at a 12-country* International Stem Cell Forum meeting chaired by the Medical Research Council (MRC) on Friday 11 July.

Stem cell therapy is a potentially revolutionary way to repair diseased and damaged body tissues with healthy new cells. But a huge amount of research is needed to understand how stem cells work and how their potential could be harnessed to treat conditions such as Parkinson’s dise