Life Sciences and Chemistry

Dartmouth Medical School geneticists have discovered a new class of proteins that see light, revealing a previously unknown system for how light works.

The novel photoreceptors are part of the gears that drive biological clocks, the cellular timekeepers of the circadian rhythm, which paces life’s daily ebb and flow in a 24-hour light-dark cycle. Their identification also opens a window for genetically engineered drug delivery systems that exploit the properties of these newfound molecu

After 40 years of searching for the photoreceptor that controls multiple vital processes in fungi, researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas have discovered the protein that triggers this phenomenon.

Light regulates several physiological processes in fungi, including their ability to produce spores and the synchronization of their internal biological clocks, but their photoreceptors – receptors that are sensitive to light and are essential for most ongoing processes – were not

The average back garden may contain twice as many species as have so far been identified on the whole planet, according to a study published today by British scientists.

But gardeners would need a microscope to observe the massive biodiversity, which exists almost entirely among micro-organisms in the soil.

Using new methods of analysis, Dr Tom Curtis, of the Department of Civil Engineering, Newcastle University, England, and colleagues, estimated that a tonne of soil could contain

Genes that are inappropriately turned on play a critical role in triggering some diseases. For researchers, the trick is learning how to deactivate these genes to treat illnesses. In a step toward reaching that goal, scientists at Stanford University Medical Center have developed a gene-therapy technique to switch off genes in mice. The finding could potentially lead to ways of treating such diseases as cancer, hepatitis C and AIDS.

In plants and lower organisms such as flies or worms, rese

The Science Generation project which European research commissioner Philippe Busquin is presenting in Brussels today aims to make decision-makers, politicians and scientists, as well as the general public, better informed on action to be taken at the interface between life sciences and society. This project, receiving €1.44 million in EU funding, seeks to set up networks of scientists, students and journalists, extending into the regions, with colloquia and public opinion surveys and debates online

As film buffs queue to watch the new Spider-man movie, geography students from the University of Sussex have gone one better by discovering a new species of spider in the wild.

The second year undergraduates were taking part in a field course to the Seychelles, one of the most biologically diverse places on the planet. As part of this trip the students were responsible for helping to set insect traps in the Vallée de Mai, a UNESCO World Heritage Site on Praslin, the second-largest island in