Life Sciences and Chemistry

Animal Models Offer Newborn Opportunity to Permanently Rescue Insulin-making Cells and Possibly Even Protect Against Future Onset

A common condition that leads to low birthweight babies may predispose the infants to obesity and diabetes later in life by denying cells in the pancreas access to the chemical signals they need to mature, according to researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. Moreover, the condition, which they have successfully modeled in rodents

After seven years of work, researchers have succeeded in deducing the three-dimensional structure of an elusive and complex protein enzyme that is central to regulating the body’s largest family of receptors. These receptors, called G-protein-coupled receptors, nestle in the cell membrane and respond to external chemical signals such as hormones and neurotransmitters, to switch on cell machinery.

The thousands of such receptors throughout the body play a fundamental role in the mechan

One of the potential risks associated with the wider release of genetically modified crops and their use in mainstream agriculture is the hybridisation of transgenic plants with their wild relatives. Previous studies on mechanisms for the escape of transgenic material into the wild population have focused on pollen dispersal as the main route, but new work by scientists at the Université de Lille in France to be published in Proceedings B, a Royal Society journal, highlights the role of seed dispers

Researchers looking inside a pathogenic soil bacterium have found an organelle, a subcellular pouch, existing independently from the plasma membrane. The discovery within a prokaryotic organism challenges the theory on the origin of eukaryotic organelles and suggests a targeted approach to killing many disease-causing organisms.

“The organelle we found in the bacterium Agrobacterium tumefaciens is practically identical to the organelle called acidocalcisome in unicellular eukaryotes,” said R

Many of the body’s responses to large changes in environmental light are controlled by a newly discovered light detection system in the eye, scientists report today.

Researchers from the UK, Canada, the USA and Germany reveal that the eye’s brightness detection system helps set the body’s internal clock, regulate general activity levels and control the size of the pupil.

The new brightness detector system is based upon a molecule sensitive to blue light called opsin,

Long ago genetic engineering got deep reach into pharmacological and food industry, agriculture and medicine. The trees are no exclusion, but genetic engineers started to deal with them approximately ten years later than with other objects: the trees are too difficult for genetic investigations and manipulations. The wood plant genetic engineering activities are now in full swing in different countries of the world, including Russia. When improving trees through classical selection methods, the resea