Life Sciences and Chemistry

A study by Princeton University scientists has shown that bacteria actively move around their environments to form social organizations. The researchers placed bacteria in minute mazes and found that they sought each other out using chemical signals.

Biologists have become increasingly aware of social interactions among bacteria, but previously believed that clusters formed only when bacteria randomly landed somewhere, then multiplied into dense populations. The discovery that they a

Northwestern University researchers have found that caspases, a family of protein-cutting enzymes involved in programmed cell death (apoptosis), may be a missing link in the chain of molecular events leading to Alzheimer´s disease.
Alzheimer´s disease is a neurodegenerative condition affecting an estimated 4 million Americans that causes memory loss and, ultimately, dementia. Patients with this disease have abnormal deposits (plaques) of protein fragments called amyloid-beta surrounding

Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas have discovered a way to inhibit a biochemical process that accompanies labor and to postpone delivery for one to two days in pregnant mice.

“Since the biochemical steps associated with labor are likely the same in both mice and humans, a similar treatment might someday help prevent pre-term labor in women,” said Dr. Carole Mendelson, professor of biochemistry and obstetrics and gynecology and senior author of the study, publish

A single gene, called PHANTASTICA (PHAN), controls whether a plant makes feathery leaves like a tomato or umbrella-like leaves like Oxalis. The same mechanism is shared by a wide group of flowering plants.

“It’s a very surprising finding, that modifying one gene in the tomato alters the leaf from one form to another,” said Neelima Sinha, a professor of plant biology at UC Davis who is senior author on the paper.

Plant leaves fall into two main groups: simple, single-bl

Nitric Oxide regulates stem cell division in the adult brain; Strategy seen for repairing brain damage caused by neurodegenerative disease and stroke

Most neurons in the mammalian brain are produced during embryonic development. However, several regions of the adult brain continue to spawn large numbers of neurons through the proliferation of neural stem cells. Moreover, it is becoming clear that these new neurons are integrated into existing brain circuitry.

Now, researcher

Females prefer burrows

The signal is an arched wall of sand called a hood which courting males of the fiddler crab Uca musica build at the entrances to their burrows on sand flats in Panama. Males have one very large claw that they wave to attract females to their burrows and females visit several males before choosing a mate by staying with a male in his burrow. These small crabs are at great risk of predation from ever-present shore birds. When moving between burrows they reduce th