Life Sciences and Chemistry

While the vision-impaired Hubble Space Telescope needed optical doctoring from shuttle astronauts, vision researchers back on Earth were wondering if the human eye was clever enough to fix itself.

Now a neurobiology study at Cornell University suggests that internal parts of the eye indeed can compensate for less-than-perfect conditions in other parts — either developmentally (during the lifetime of one individual) or genetically (over many generations).

Results of the study, “I

Broad implications seen for treating Alzheimer’s and other human diseases

By teaching fruit flies to avoid an odor and isolating mutant flies that can’t remember their lessons, researchers at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York have identified dozens of genes required for long-term memory.

In the same study, using DNA chip technology, the scientists identified another large group of candidate memory genes that are either switched on or off in the fly brain during memo

Classifying corals in terms of species is a risky business. Biologist Onno Diekmann from the University of Groningen has discovered that four species of stone corals differ so little in terms of their genetic material that they can scarcely be termed separate species.

Corals are formed by a collection of identical coral polyps which together form a coral colony. Onno Diekmann compared the genetic material from six different species of coral from the Madracis genus, which are found in the co

Protein used during cell development important in cloning technique

Researchers at the University of Minnesota have identified the protein responsible for disassembly of donor nucleoli in the context of nuclear cloning. Although it was already known that nucleoli, essential structures for protein synthesis, normally disassemble or disappear for a period of time in the early animal development and also during nuclear cloning, it was not known until this study what causes this phenomeno

Human intelligence is like a mental juggling act in which the smartest performers use specific brain regions to resist distraction and keep attention focused on critical pieces of information, according to a new brain imaging study from Washington University in St. Louis.

“Some people seem to perform better than others in novel, mentally-demanding situations, but why?” asks Jeremy R. Gray, Ph.D., co-author of the study to be posted Feb. 18 in an advance online issue of the journal Nature N

UI researchers discover new mechanism controlling movement of cell structures

Organelles are compartments and structures inside cells that perform varied and vital functions, including energy production, storage and transportation of important substances and removal of waste products. Normal cellular function requires that organelles be positioned in specific locations in a cell. Thus, movement of the organelles to their appropriate destinations is critical.

A team of Univer