Rockefeller researchers discover unexpected trigger

Often in science a novel set of experiments comes along that forces researchers to abandon old models in exchange for new ones that better fit their observations. This is the case in a new Nature report by Rockefeller University researchers, which finds that past models of cellular division in the simple yeast organism were focused on the wrong protein.

Until now, scientists thought that yeast cells began dividing into two

A crucial piece of the puzzle into how the eye becomes wired to the brain has been revealed by scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif., and UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas.

In findings published in today’s edition of Neuron, the researchers report that a certain class of Eph receptors and ephrin ligands – proteins that cause cells to either repel or attract each other – control how nerve connections from the developing eye form maps that pre

A new gene shown to be essential for pollen production in flowering plants has been discovered by scientists at Penn State University. A paper describing the team’s discovery of the gene, whose activity they found is necessary for the formation of cells required for pollen production, will be published in the 1 August 2002 issue of the journal Genes and Development.

“This research is the first indication that a specific kind of protein known as a receptor-linked protein kinase, which resul

Researchers from the State University of New York Upstate Medical University in Syracuse and the University of California, San Francisco, have found evidence that methadone treatment programs are effective platforms for providing tuberculosis (TB) preventive therapy to substance abusers. In the study, methadone treatment combined with directly observed TB preventive therapy improved adherence to and completion of TB preventive therapy by injection drug abusers.

Previous research has shown t

Although they have persisted for tens of millions of years, neotropical lowland forests have changed greatly in extent and composition due to climatic variation and to human impacts. In a symposium at the 2002 meetings of the Association for Tropical Biology, hosted by the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI), Panama, scientists presented the latest results of research on neotropical forests and their transformations up to the time of Columbus.

Bruce MacFadden, of the University o

A gene thought to keep a single X chromosome turned on in mice plays no such role in humans, Johns Hopkins researchers report in the August issue of the American Journal of Human Genetics.

The finding is likely to relegate the disproven gene to relative obscurity, at least in humans, says Barbara Migeon, M.D., of the McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine, whose laboratory found the human version of the gene in 2001. It also moves the search for the gene from the X chromosome to the