Think of it as finding the ultimate genetic engineers.

A plant biologist at Michigan State University has harvested clues about genes that coordinate the development of plant parts that must work together.

The work, published in the Nov. 28 issue of the British science journal Nature, points to a single mechanism that regulates the growth of related parts in flowers – kind of a genetic project manager.

“This is why we’re not just a discombobulated collection

Nearly 40 years ago scientists were startled to discover that the eye, far from being a still camera, actually has cells that respond to movement. Moreover, these cells are specialized to respond to movement in one direction only, such as left to right or right to left.

Now, in a paper in this week’s issue of the journal Nature, biologists at the University of California, Berkeley, have finally detailed the cellular circuit responsible for motion detection in the eye’s retina.

Artificial cells, or liposomes, are a promising area in biotechnology and nanotechnology, and now they have a new power source. An experimental finding has revealed a new method for converting light to stored chemical energy within the cells.

A team headed by Arizona State University chemistry professors Thomas Moore and Devens Gust has developed a light-powered molecular pump that shuttles calcium ions through a phospholipid membrane – calcium ion pumping that resembles various key cellula

A report of an individual infected with a second strain of HIV despite effective drug treatment following the first infection has researchers concerned.

“For the first time, we’ve shown it is possible for an individual to become infected with two closely related strains of HIV,” says Bruce D. Walker, M.D., a grantee of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and a researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

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Researchers examine aging in wild insects for first time

A unique insect has given researchers the opportunity to study aging in the wild for the first time.

“Aging – or senescence – has been seen under controlled conditions in the lab, but never before in insects living in their naturally evolved habitat,” says U of T zoology doctoral candidate Russell Bonduriansky. “Our study of antler flies shows these animals do age in the wild.”

Bonduriansky and co-researcher C

Rearrangements of the mixed lineage leukemia gene, MLL, are associated with aggressive leukemias in both children and adults. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have found that one portion of the MLL protein is an enzyme that “edits” the so-called histone code, a series of modifications to proteins associated with DNA that influence how and when certain genes are turned on and off. Their findings are presented in the November issue of Molecular Cell.

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