Life Sciences and Chemistry

Chua lab discovers protein that regulates early growth arrest

For an infant plant, the world outside of its seed is not always a friendly place. Drought, wind, ice and other harsh conditions would threaten its well-being were it not for the shelter of its seed. Consequently, the decision to shed this weatherproof coat in order to begin to grow is perhaps the most critical a plant will ever make: once it stretches its fragile stem up toward the sky, there’s no turning back to the

Discovery could help scientists to understand how cells ’remember’ which genes to switch on or off

Scientists from Imperial College London, the Medical Research Council, Cancer Research UK and the Hammersmith Hospital have discovered an important aspect of how heterochromatin, the wrapping around DNA, works.

The researchers, whose work is published today in Science, discovered that heterochromatin is dynamic, constantly wrapping and unwrapping around DNA, and not s

Some mice with a genetic mutation for mahogany-colored coats also develop spongiform degeneration of brain tissue, similar to mad cow disease. Because of this oddity, the mice could be valuable animal models for human disorders, such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases, according to geneticists at Cornell and Stanford universities.

The surprising discovery in a mouse strain known to geneticists since the 1960s is reported in the latest issue of the journal Science (Jan. 31, 2003

Biochemical mechanism may lead to new cancer prevention and treatment strategies

Scientists at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital have discovered a novel biochemical process that plays a critical role in helping cells in the body respond to DNA damage, such as that caused by exposure to radiation, environmental toxins or free radicals.
The findings could lead to new approaches to prevent cancer, better ways to treat cancer and to the development of sensitive methods deter

Scientists have long touted carbon nanotubes as a futuristic means of delivering drugs, fortifying brittle materials and conducting current in miniaturized circuits. But attempts to introduce actual nanotubes into these roles have often been stopped in their tracks by the slender filaments’ stubborn and unhelpful tendency to clump together in solution.

Now scientists at the University of Pennsylvania have found that a readily available chemical, a surfactant called sodium dodecylbenzen

New research published in Genome Biology investigates genes that increase the life span of fruit flies in an effort to gain a greater understanding of the ageing process. The researchers from the University of Southern California and Harvard Medical School screened 10,000 fruit fly populations that were mutated.

Their results revealed that six populations of mutant flies lived 5-17% longer than normal. Furthermore, analysis of these long-lived flies showed that the extended life span