Life Sciences and Chemistry

Cornell University entomologists have unlocked an evolutionary secret to how insects evolve into new species. The discovery has major implications for the control of insect populations through disruption of mating, suggesting that over time current eradication methods could become ineffective, similar to the way insects develop pesticide resistance.

The researchers, led by Wendell L. Roelofs, the Liberty Hyde Bailey Professor of Insect Biochemistry at Cornell, made the discovery while exami

DNA has an oscillating double-helix structure. This oscillating means that the DNA molecules conduct electricity much less well than was previously thought. Ultrafast cameras were one of the devices the researchers from Amsterdam used to demonstrate this.

It turns out the DNA does not have a rigid regular structure as stated in textbooks. In reality the double helix of DNA forms a very dynamic chaotic system. The rigid structure in textbooks should be regarded as the average position of many

Developing countries stand to profit most from advances in genome science, write Samuel Broder, Stephen Hoffman and Peter Hotez in this month’s issue of EMBO reports (EMBO reports September, 2002 pp 806–812). They claim that biotechnology coupled with genomics might emerge as the key technology in the 21st century for improving global health and probably even avoiding major political conflicts and wars.

The authors warn that we must no longer view the diseases of the developing world in

A Surrey scientist claims to have an answer to what is often considered to be the hardest problem in science (sometimes just known as the “Hard Problem”): why we are aware.

Johnjoe McFadden, Professor of Molecular Genetics at the University of Surrey, has previously proposed that consciousness is generated by the brain’s electromagnetic field, the cemi field. The cemi field theory – that our thoughts are electric fields in the brain – has generated a lot of interest both in the UK and across

Answer revealed in glowing live cells

Using a new mouse model that literally glows with health- protecting molecules, researchers have rewritten part of the textbook tale about how the immune system knows when to fight germs.

Time-lapse video from a pair of Harvard Medical School labs shows how pieces of captured germs may work their way to the surface of live dendritic cells. Dendritic cells are immune cells that alert other immune cells about invading germs. Inside a dendri

Mechanism may provide insights into development and cancer

When cells divide in two, they must carefully manage the process by which their DNA is replicated and then apportioned to the daughter cells. In one critical step along the way, the replicated DNA strands – or sisters – are held together for a period by a temporary scaffold of bridging proteins. When the timing is right, the proteins unzip, allowing the DNA sisters to separate. Errors in this or other steps in cell division ca