Life Sciences and Chemistry

As the old Hawaiian love song says, tiny bubbles really do make some people feel fine. Chemists, that is. But there is no wine involved this time, just water.

National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) chemists reported in the June 24 online edition of Langmuir that a process called microboiling shows promise for quick, simple and inexpensive chemical sensing. The process involves the formation of tiny vapor bubbles on a 200-nanometer-thick film of precious metal immersed in wat

New study discovers unusual structural features implicated in disease

A detailed analysis of the reference sequence of chromosome 7 has uncovered structural features that appear to promote genetic changes that can cause disease, researchers from the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium said today.

In a study published in the July 10 issue of the journal Nature, a multi-institution team, led by the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, reported it

Scientists have long thought gene exchange between individuals of unrelated species to be an extremely rare event among eukaryotes — the massive group of organisms that counts among its members humans, oak trees, kelp and mushrooms — throughout the group’s 2 billion year history.

But a new Indiana University Bloomington study in this week’s Nature suggests that such genetic events, called horizontal gene transfers, have happened more often than previously thought during the evol

Researchers from Cornell University have developed a miniaturized DNA-based biological testing system that fits on a silicon chip and can be customized to detect a wide variety of microorganisms. They present their research today at the American Society for Microbiology’s (ASM) Conference on Bio- Micro- Nano-systems.

The chip consists of two areas. The first area captures the DNA from the sample and purifies it. The second is a reaction chamber where a process called polymerase chain react

Today the Commission adopted a proposal for guidelines on EU-funded human embryonic stem cell research. The EU 6th Research Framework Programme (FP6 2003-2006), as adopted by the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament in 2002, allows for the funding of human embryonic stem cell research in relation to the fight against major diseases.

Such research, in particular when it involves the derivation of stem cells from human supernumerary embryos, can only take place within a fra

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill researchers have discovered a prime regulator of the mechanism by which human cells migrate in health and in illness, a process crucial to sustaining life.

Their work helps explain how cells can stick to a surface long enough to pull themselves and move forward and then release that grip so that they can continue and not be anchored to one spot.

Cai Huang, a graduate student about to complete his doctorate in cell and developmental biolo