Genetics & Molecular Biology

Mutations: Male Fertility Is From Mars, Female Fertility Is From Venus

About 15% of adults suffer from fertility problems, primarily due to genetic factors. This is something of an evolutionary paradox; wouldn't natural selection have caused people with infertility to not reproduce?Various theories explain the survival ...

Article - News Staff - Jul 28 2014 - 10:41am

African Rice Sequenced: A Genome To Feed The World

Credit: University of Arizona Researchers have sequenced the complete genome of Oryza glaberrima (African rice), which will enhance scientists' and agriculturalists' understanding of the growing patterns of African rice, as well as enable the de ...

Article - News Staff - Jul 28 2014 - 5:58pm

How Spiders Spin Silk- The Biology

Spider silk is lightweight and stretchy yet has tensile strength greater than steel. Its chemistry is just as fascinating. Silk proteins, called spidroins, must convert from a soluble form to solid fibers at ambient temperatures, with water as a solvent, ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 8 2014 - 3:56pm

Physicists Verify Zipf's Law Using Eye Neural Fly Data

Physicists have identified a mechanism that may help explain Zipf's law – a unique pattern of behavior found in disparate systems, including complex biological ones. Their mathematical models demonstrate how Zipf's law naturally arises when a su ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 8 2014 - 12:30am

Jumping Genes Help Black Truffles Adapt To Their Environment

Tuber melanosporum- black or Périgord truffles- are fungi that grow in symbiosis with the roots of oak and hazelnut trees. In the world of haute cuisine, they are expensive and highly prized. Epigenetics is the study of changes in gene expression caused b ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 6 2014 - 3:00pm

The Epigenetic History Of Stress During Pregnancy

Your stress levels may be another thing you can blame on your mother. Scientists investigating pregnancies in four generations of rats show that inherited epigenetic effects of stress could affect pregnancies for generations.  The researchers believe that ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 7 2014 - 9:32am

Heads Up: New Technique Allows Population Scale Genetic Engineering

Hey, heads up Public: game-changing new science means we can probably make insects stop spreading malaria, dengue fever, and Lyme disease.  Or reverse pesticide resistance in agricultural pests.  Or even eliminate invasive (or otherwise undesired) species ...

Article - Robert Cooper - Aug 11 2014 - 9:02am

Synthetic Sperm Protein Is A Fertile Discovery

Researchers have come up with a promising method of treating male infertility; a synthetic version of the sperm-originated protein known as PAWP. PAWP has been shown to be required, they write, and their synthetic version was sufficient to initiate the fe ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 11 2014 - 1:00pm

No Excess: Antarctic Midge's Genome Is Smallest Insect's To Date

Scientists have sequenced the genome of Belgica antarctica, the Antarctic midge – the smallest in insects described to-date –  and believe it can explained by the midge's adaptation to its deep-freeze extreme living environment. The midge is a small, ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 12 2014 - 12:39pm

Inpp4b: Nerve Conduction Velocity Linked To Multiple Sclerosis

A new study identifies a novel gene, Inpp4b, that controls nerve conduction velocity. Investigators report that even minor reductions in conduction velocity may aggravate disease in multiple sclerosis (MS) patients and in mice bred for the MS-like conditi ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 15 2014 - 8:53am