Microbiology

Question On Origin Of Embryonic Stem Cells For Connective Tissues Of Skull And Face

With improved resolution, tissue-specific molecular markers and precise timing, a group of scientists say they have possibly overturned a long-standing assumption about the origin of embryonic cells that give rise to connective and skeletal tissues that fo ...

Article - News Staff - May 25 2008 - 12:37pm

Adult Stem Cells To Grow Bone Gets Closer With Enzyme Discovery

By adding an enzyme to adult stem cells 'in vitro', remarkable results can be booked 'in vivo', say scientists of the University of Twente in The Netherlands. Up to now, so-called mesenchymal stem cells could not succesfully be used to ...

Article - News Staff - May 26 2008 - 1:33pm

TSLP- Skin Irritation Leads To Death In Mice

When patches of red, flaky and itchy skin on newborn mice led rapidly to their deaths, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis looked for the reason why. What they found was a molecular alarm system that serves as a sentinel to ...

Article - News Staff - May 27 2008 - 8:50pm

Vegetables And Salmonella- Washing Is Not Enough, Says Study

Would you like a side of food poisoning with that salad? Salmonella can infect plant cells and successfully evade all the defense mechanisms of plants so cleaning the surfaces of raw fruits and vegetables, e.g. by washing, is not sufficient to protect agai ...

Article - News Staff - May 28 2008 - 10:53am

Could These Protocells Tell Us About Earth's Earliest Cells?

A team of researchers at Harvard University have modeled in the laboratory a primitive cell, or protocell, that is capable of building, copying and containing DNA. Since there are no physical records of what the first primitive cells on Earth looked like, ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 5 2008 - 3:03pm

Mfd Protein Implicated In Antibiotic Resistance To Food Poisoning

Researchers from Iowa State University have identified a factor that promotes the development of antibiotic resistance in a bacterial pathogen. The study explains that Mfd, a protein involved in DNA transcription and repair, plays an important role in the ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 6 2008 - 11:30am

Gene Change Makes Cells Build Cell Mass For Placenta Instead Of Embryo

By manipulating a specific gene in a mouse blastocyst — the structure that develops from a fertilized egg but is not yet an actual embryo — scientists with the University of Florida's McKnight Brain Institute and the Harvard Stem Cell Institute caused ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 9 2008 - 3:20pm

ASM Phylogenomics Notes

Well, I just gave my talk on phylogenomic and functional predictions and am going to try and catch up with blogging. In my talk I discussed how an understanding of function and prediction of function requires an understanding of how functions have evolved. ...

Article - Jonathan Eisen - Jun 12 2008 - 11:58am

Deep Microbes Get all the Love

Well, you know microbes must really be cool because Olivia Judson is blogging about them. You see, Olivia is also known as Dr. Tatiana. Judson's book " Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation " created and still creates a stir and help ...

Blog Post - Jonathan Eisen - Feb 21 2009 - 7:42pm

Can This British Columbia Lake Tell Us Something About Life On Other Planets?

There are microbialites, strange coral-like growths, at the bottom of Pavilion Lake in British Columbia. They have been out of the reach of scientists but with the addition of new submersible technology they can now be studied. The growths might, says Greg ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 16 2008 - 10:46am