Life Sciences and Chemistry

Two researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute are creating a faster, more efficient data-mining technique to determine basic rules of how proteins form. The researchers are Mohammed Zaki, assistant professor of computer science, and Chris Bystroff, assistant professor of biology.

Researchers can identify a protein’s biological function, and therefore its specific role in disease, if they know the 3-D structure of a protein given its amino-acid sequence.

Twenty simple amin

Zeolites are an extremely important class of inorganic materials that can separate gases or liquids on the basis of molecular size and shape. The backbone of a billion-dollar-a-year industry, these molecular sieves are used in numerous applications, from the production of biodegradable detergents, to the removal of moisture from natural gas pipelines, to the catalytic cracking of heavy petroleum distillates into gasoline.

Now, chemist Kenneth S. Suslick and colleagues at the University of Il

Microbes can withstand extreme levels of atmospheric ultraviolet light (UV) by producing their own sunscreens. Unlike humans, some bugs may even be able to survive without any help from the ozone layer scientists heard today (Thursday 19 September) at the Society for General Microbiology autumn meeting at Loughborough University.

“A group of microbes called cyanobacteria produce substances called mycosporines in response to UV light. We’ve shown that this is an ancient mechanism dating back

Researchers at Oregon State University have made an important advance in the understanding of “micro-RNA” molecules, which are tiny bits of genetic material that were literally unknown 10 years ago but now represent one of the most exciting new fields of study in biology.

The findings will be reported Friday in the journal Science.

They reveal for the first time a new mechanism by which micro-RNA can stop the function of messenger-RNA by literally cutting it in half, interfering wit

Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas have discovered a protein that regulates growth and development of the heart from its fetal stage to adulthood.

Findings published in today’s edition of Cell report that the protein, named Homeodomain-Only Protein (HOP) by the researchers, is active in controlling heart growth at various stages of development in mice. Dr. Eric Olson, chairman of molecular biology at UT Southwestern and the study’s principal investigator, said the team

Scientists at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have identified and described a small gene that regulates the delicate balance involved in the healthy growth and replication of heart muscle cells.

“This finding is likely to be important for our understanding of the causes of congenital heart disease. It is also relevant to our attempts to regrow damaged heart muscle,” said the corresponding author of the study, Jonathan A. Epstein, MD, of Penn’s Departments of Medicine a