Microbiology

Bone Tissue Derived From Human Embryonic Stem Cells Repairs Skull Injury In Mice

Finally, a win for human embryonic stem cells (hESCs). Mice whose skulls were made whole again by bone tissue grown from hESCs shows that healing critical-size defects (defects that would not otherwise heal on their own) in intramembraneous bone, the flat ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 2 2007 - 12:44pm

Violent Sex Acts Boost Insect's Immunity System

The long-held idea that only vertebrates have sophisticated adaptive immune systems that can protect them for life against many pathogens after being infected by them just once has been revised in recent years. It turns out that many insects also have a fo ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 4 2007 - 11:17am

Bioprospectors Identify New Biofuel-Producing Bacteria

A bioprospecting expedition to Iceland’s famed hot springs has yielded new strains of bacteria with potential of producing hydrogen and ethanol fuels from wastewater now discharged from factories that process sugar beets, potatoes and other plant material. ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 8 2007 - 2:56pm

Molecular Code Broken For Getting Into High Priority 'Drug Targets'

All cells are surrounded by protective, fatty membranes.In the cell membrane there are thousands of membrane proteins that transport nutritional substances, ions, and water through the membrane. Membrane proteins are also necessary for cells to recognize e ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 13 2007 - 8:54pm

Organic Food And Neem Pesticide

Today, people from all over the world are insufficiently aware about their daily food consumption. Most like to eat organic food and reduce GM (Genetically Modified) crops. So farmers of both modern and developing countries are trying to produce organic cr ...

Article - Arifin Sandhi - Dec 17 2007 - 11:28pm

Discovery: Osteocrin Gene Controls Bone Growth

A research team led by Dr. Pierre Moffatt of the Shriners Hospital for Children in Montreal and McGill University’s Department of Human Genetics has uncovered the molecular mechanism by which the protein osteocrin controls bone growth – a discovery that ma ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 19 2007 - 7:42pm

New Techniques For Predicting Protein-Coding Genes

Researchers at Stanford University report in Genome Biology a new approach to computationally predicting the locations and structures of protein-coding genes in a genome. Gene finding remains an important problem in biology as scientists are still far from ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 20 2007 - 2:14am

‘Jekyll And Hyde’ Bacteria Offer Pest Control Without Pesticides

New research at York has revealed so-called ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ bacteria, suggesting a novel way to control insect pests without using insecticides. Researchers at the University of York studied the relationship between plant-dwelling insects and the bacteri ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 20 2007 - 6:58pm

How Do You Know Whether You Are Male Or Female?

In mammals, male or female development depends on the presence of the Y chromosome, which is only found in males because it includes masculinizing genes. But other animal groups have evolved different systems. James Erickson and Jerome Quintero at Texas A& ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 27 2007 - 12:30am

Making Cavity-Causing Bacteria 'Self-Destruct'

Bacteria that eat sugar and release cavity-causing acid onto teeth may soon be made dramatically more vulnerable to their own acid. Researchers have identified key genes and proteins that, if interfered with, can take away the ability of a key bacterial sp ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 2 2008 - 12:16pm