With the full sequence of the human genome now in hand, scientists are turning renewed attention to the molecular processes that regulate the genes encoded by DNA. Estimates are that only a tenth of all genes are expressed at any given time. What controls when and where genes are activated?

Increasingly, researchers believe that the mechanisms that govern gene activity themselves resemble a complicated non-DNA code – an intricate pattern of activity among the molecules that package and cont

Bioengineers at Dartmouth have genetically engineered yeast to produce humanized therapeutic proteins to address the manufacturing crunch currently confronting the biopharmaceutical industry. Reported in this week’s issue of Science, the researchers have re-engineered the yeast P. pastoris to secrete a complex human glycoprotein–a process offering significant advantages over current production methods using mammalian cell lines, according to the researchers.

The study, titled “Production

Effective and safe complementary nutrition therapy

The results of a new double-blind randomized placebo controlled human trial of people with type 2 diabetes revealed a potential mechanism that may explain the ability of chromium picolinate to improve insulin resistance in human skeletal muscle – the primary site for glucose metabolism. These data suggest that when chromium picolinate is added to the diet, insulin sensitivity improves for people with diabetes, a chronic disease that a

Imagine shopping online for the perfect back-to-school outfit. You can see the colour and size and perhaps the texture of the fabric, but can you tell how it will look from different perspectives under fluorescent classroom lighting? “The material might be very beautiful but a potential customer wouldn’t know that because the image gives a grossly incomplete sense of texture,” says Alex Vasilescu, a doctoral candidate at U of T’s Department of Computer Science. The software she has

Scientific breakthrough in the transmutation of isotopes

Collaboration between the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) DG, the University of Jena (Germany), the University of Strathclyde (UK), Imperial College (UK), and the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (UK) has led to the transmutation of long-lived radioactive iodine-129 into short-lived iodine-128 using very high intensity laser radiation. Until recently, transmutation could only be achieved in nuclear reactors or p

The core of the earth doesn’t look the way it was expected to. Scientists at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden , KTH, can now show that iron, under extremely high pressure, such as that found in the inner earth, takes on unexpected properties, and this can be of importance in understanding the movements of the earth, such as, earthquakes. The results are being presented in the new issue of the British scientific journal Nature.

The core of the earth consists almost excl