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Biofilms are slimy layers of bacteria formed by large agglomerations of bacteria, many times of several species, kept together by adhesive molecules. They can appear almost anywhere, even on your teeth when you don't brush them for a day or two. They can be resistant to many types of antibiotics and when they f... |
10 July 2007
02:42 GMT |
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This is an extremely rare case: a 23-year-old woman has given birth to a four-legged baby girl at the Lebowakgomo Hospital in Polokwane (Limpopo, north of Pretoria). The little girl came into this world at 6.20am yesterday.Dr Elizabeth Reji, head of the neonatal unit at the hospital, said that during the initial mome... |
6 July 2007
14:11 GMT |
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After the mad cow, why not the demented pig? This is what Danish researchers at Institute of Human Genetics, Aarhus University, and University of Copenhagen, led by Associate Professor Arne Lund Jorgensen, are going to produce: the first pigs containing genes that trigger the Alzheimer's disease. The first clone... |
6 July 2007
06:33 GMT |
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You won't believe it, but our sperm cells travel up to 6 meters (20 ft) from the testes to the penis. This journey occurs mostly in the epididymis, a tightly coiled tube that enables the sperms to do what they have to do: fertilization. A team at the University of Illinois has found a gene crucial for the devel... |
5 July 2007
14:21 GMT |
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Geneticists seem determined to get the animal that would be the perfect pet while delivering us milk, wool, skin, meat, honey, silk and the perfect crop that will deliver us eatable fruits, seeds, tubers, roots, leaves, flowers and so on. Till then, Israeli scientists have genetically engineered tomatoes to which the... |
5 July 2007
05:40 GMT |
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After running through all options, in vitro fertilization (IVF) is the last stop. By then, most women are already around their 40's. But with the increasing age, the chances to give birth to malformed or genetically diseased babies are high. That's why many of these women undergo pre-implantation genetic ... |
5 July 2007
04:29 GMT |
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Any couch potato with high self-esteem will say his/her piggy shape is because he/she does not go to the gym. And the big muscles are just the result of hard effort and potentially everybody could display them if trained. Our body shape is the result of the combination of three tissues: muscular, bony and fatty. But ... |
4 July 2007
11:51 GMT |
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Take a look at Bruce Willis' case: how can the father be so hot and have a daughter who looks like a wack?But this does not apply only to humans. Genes that enhance the manhood in males are not necessarily a beneficial heredity for the daughters, too. At least in red deer (Cervus elaphus), the best hunks that wi... |
28 June 2007
04:09 GMT |
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This seems like taken from the most surreal fiction, but you could soon say "Hallo" to creatures that preceded you in the evolution. A team studying Neanderthal DNA says it could be possible to build a complete Neanderthal genome, despite the degradation in time of its genetic material. The team led by Svante Paabo o... |
26 June 2007
09:16 GMT |
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It seems paradoxical, but our vulnerability to HIV seems to have been caused by the fact that we got immunity to another related virus. Our evolution seems not to have predicted that humans will eat chimps later on. A research team managed to show this by bringing back to life an inactive chimpanzee retrovirus that h... |
22 June 2007
04:59 GMT |
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She may not love you anymore or she may feel neglected or experience curiosity. But female cheating is not only limited to humans. In the case of the superb starling, females seem to cheat their males for the sake of their chicks, as Cornell researchers have found. The superb starling females (Lamprotornis superbus) ... |
21 June 2007
14:46 GMT |
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95 % of our genome has been thought to be just junk, or simply a useless desert. Up until now, as some scientists have started to disagree on this idea. One of them is Professor Alexandre Reymond, from the Center for Integrative Genomics, University of Lausanne, Switzerland and the Department of Genetic Medicine, Uni... |
20 June 2007
04:49 GMT |
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Scientists are working hard to demonstrate the beneficial effects that coffee has on our health, such as easing muscular pain or gout symptoms, or increasing sex drive. Others show that its effects are rather bogus, like the so-called energizing effect. But others get back to the subject, showing and - even more - ex... |
15 June 2007
10:51 GMT |
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Viruses play with our DNA to get their own DNA replicated. In many cases, this triggers cancers, which are nothing more than mutations freed by organism's control. But a team has found an intriguing surprise: in mice, herpes viruses can hijack their host cells' tools for fixing DNA damage (mutations) to boo... |
15 June 2007
05:12 GMT |
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The black widow is perhaps most famous for its deadly venom, but few know that this spider's dragline silk is a standout compared to other spider silks due to its superior strength, toughness and extensibility, a combination that makes it absorb huge energy quantities. Now a team at the University of California,... |
15 June 2007
04:21 GMT |
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You share about 49.99 % of your genes with the guy next door. With her also the same amount. But there may be some mutations you have produced. Or received from them. And usually mutations are rather nasty. 1. Baldness is more common in men, as testosterone sensitive form is the most common. But geneticists still do ... |
13 June 2007
16:31 GMT |
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Maleness is given by that Y chromosome that leads to the XY formula while females are XX, with two X chromosomes. That's why in the early development of the female fertilized egg, one of the two X chromosomes must be silenced. When by accident this does not happen, severe genetic diseases get installed. Both X c... |
13 June 2007
14:06 GMT |
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Ancient ferocious Celtic warriors knew why they put horns on their helmets (it was the Celts, not the Vikings, that adorned their helmets!). Because a bigger horn means you are a better male. This is real, at least in the case of the alpine ibex. A new research found a perfect correlation between horn size of mature ... |
8 June 2007
05:56 GMT |
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Stem cells promise everything: from new hearts to new testes or eyes. Now, researchers have announced major advances in stem cell research: directly reprogramming fetal mouse cells to be indistinguishable from embryonic stem (ES) cells. This way scientists could get cell lines tailored to individual patients without ... |
8 June 2007
03:42 GMT |
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Sponges are the oldest multicellular animals with living representatives.They are made just of two cell layers that form a tube, living fixed on the substrate and the only movement they make is closing or opening their pores through which food, waste and gases enter or go. Being so simple, they have no neurons or syn... |
6 June 2007
05:58 GMT |
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One in ten men in the Western countries suffers from erectile dysfunction and the inability of the penis varies greatly in severity. The causes also vary greatly and even if many treatments have been developed, including using drugs like Viagra, Cialis and Levitra, not all types of ED respond to medication, like that... |
4 June 2007
14:26 GMT |
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It would be nice to see all the mosquitoes and nasty insects dead with the first cold wave, and maybe see them no more the next spring.But it doesn't work like that: even if we do not see them during the winter, they posses a number of specialized proteins, "heat-shock proteins", that enable them to pass through... |
31 May 2007
04:49 GMT |
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This is the most dangerous naturally occurring toxin: the Botulinum toxin. It is the trademark of Clostridium botulinum bacterium and less than 2 kg (5 pounds) would be enough to wipe out the whole human population. Even so, in extremely small amounts, this toxin has medical and cosmetic employments, under the name o... |
29 May 2007
11:06 GMT |
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The common conception says language is just another cultural trait, like clothing, hair due, music preference or religious beliefs.It was thought that a baby learns the languages he hears in the early years. But a new research points that genes could be in fact involved in learning tonal languages like Chinese.The te... |
29 May 2007
03:41 GMT |
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We go to the doctor to have a baby when we decide we want one. And the new techniques also detect the sex of our embryo baby and eventual genetic diseases. But animals cannot appeal to technologies and they still need a way of regularizing their populations. That's especially important in the case of the species... |
26 May 2007
04:04 GMT |
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Paddlefish (Polyodon spathula) together with the sturgeons are the only survivors of a primitive group of fish which evolved earlier than 200 million years ago, before the emergence of the dinosaurs. This primitivism puts them closer to a basal evolutionary knot. Indeed, now they have come with a specific pattern of ... |
24 May 2007
03:38 GMT |
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People consider ethanol (biofuel) as being a solution to replace gas as this has reached high prices (up to $3-a-gallon) and the oil resources are finishing, being forecast to drop significantly in 30 years, not mentioning that most petroleum-rich nations are unreliable, non-democratic and unstable nations. Ethanol i... |
23 May 2007
11:19 GMT |
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Exercise not only makes us look younger, but it seems that - in case of healthy elder individuals - resistance training actually restores the muscle tissue's youth.A recent approach led by Buck Institute faculty member Dr. Simon Melov and Dr. Mark Tarnopolsky of McMaster University Medical Center in Hamilton, O... |
23 May 2007
05:37 GMT |
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Scientists come with increasing evidence that human sex is not determined by sex chromosomes but by genes placed on those chromosomes. This may explain the numerous cases of ambiguous genitalia in humans and why an individual's genitals might not match the reproductive organs inside. "What really matters is what... |
22 May 2007
17:31 GMT |
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When we do what we do is scheduled by our circadian clocks.The inner clock is guided by the perception of light-dark periods and people who travel through several time zones experience jet lag (time-change fatigue). Now a mix team from Cornell and Dartmouth reveals the molecular mechanism behind the circadian clocks,... |
22 May 2007
09:52 GMT |
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Chemotherapy has a lot of side effects, from leaving you bald to severe pain, not to mention that is not 100 % effective and recurrent cancer may still occur. But a new research made on ovarian cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy found that those possessing a mutant disabled type of the tumor-suppressing gene p53... |
17 May 2007
06:39 GMT |
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Inserting a gene into a cell is hard work. But it is even harder when it's about a plant cell. Now a team of Iowa State University has managed to do it and to trigger the gene's expression with controlled precision by using nanotechnology, a fact that could boost it as a novel powerful tool for delivery pro... |
17 May 2007
05:14 GMT |
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Could you imagine your life without French fries or chips?What boosts more the modern obesity levels, if not potato based diet?Ancient Incans deified them; while in Ireland, during the 19th century crop fail due to potato fungi triggered famine, death and massive immigration to America. Today, potato is the world... |
16 May 2007
04:21 GMT |
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Sex is as old as bacteria are. Now, a team at the University of California-Davis has developed a mathematical model of the speed of the bacterial sex. The model could help researchers in determining the spread of important bacterial traits. The gene transfer between bacteria determines the bacterial adaptation and ev... |
15 May 2007
05:19 GMT |
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Could the natural way of your sleep and how much you sleep influence the way you look?It seems that they do, as researchers have discovered that a gene controlling the mammalian circadian clock seems to be implied in weight gain from fat-rich diets. Researchers led by Joseph Besharse of the Medical College of Wiscons... |
15 May 2007
04:46 GMT |
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Dying of a broken heart is more common than you could think. In fact, heart attack is the main health problem in people over 65, affecting just in US about 5 million persons and 1 in 5 Americans dies of heart attack. The problem comes from the fact that heart cannot regenerate after birth: its cells lose reproductive... |
11 May 2007
03:31 GMT |
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Being a freak has its advantages. You can appear as different, mysterious, or do what the others cannot do. Now, Professor Marla Sokolowski, a biologist at the University of Toronto Mississauga, revealed an advantage of being different. She found that the gene affecting the foraging behavior of fruit flies has two di... |
10 May 2007
17:06 GMT |
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Marsupials and placental mammals ( humans included) had a common ancestor about 180 million years ago, during the Jurassic era (middle dinosaur epoch) and chose very different reproductive paths: marsupials rear their offspring externally, sometimes in a pouch, while placental mammals deliver well developed youngst... |
10 May 2007
05:10 GMT |
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In our search for longevity, the queen honey bee can give us many clues. She is genetically the same with the workers in her hive, but while the workers live for a few months, she can live 10 times longer (up to 10 years) than her sterile sisters and reproducing throughout all her life. A new research at the Universi... |
9 May 2007
08:37 GMT |
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When we put together genes from 2-3 species, the results can be astonishing. But fantasist hybrid mutants like the "Ninja Turtles" would be of no use. Instead, this method was employed by a team at Temple University School of Medicine, which has made a new biosensor that finds explosives and could be employed for che... |
9 May 2007
07:09 GMT |
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There is only 1.2 % genetic difference between humans and chimps, but each gene that makes the difference represents the abyss between the human and the ape. Now, researchers have discovered perhaps the most significant gene of this pool, encoding the protein called type II neuropsin, involved in human learning and ... |
8 May 2007
19:46 GMT |
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Bringing on food means a short happy life. But if you want to live longer, you must cut off from your daily food intake: look at those Okinawa people ... But why eating less prolongs life is still a question without any answer for the researchers. Yet, a step closer towards solving the mystery could have been made b... |
4 May 2007
18:06 GMT |
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From cold to hot, sweet to bitter, there must be a gene that enables us to detect these sensations. After years of research, scientists have finally detected the gene responsible for the cold sensation, at least in mammals. The gene, named TRPM8, could lead to the development of analgesic drugs provoking cold sensati... |
4 May 2007
05:07 GMT |
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Corals may be simple little sea creatures that form magnificent reefs in the tropical waters, but scientists were shocked to discover more genes in them than in humans! ... Moreover, even if they are at the base of animal evolution, corals share with people a lot of the immune system genes, and as corals are much ol... |
2 May 2007
05:56 GMT |
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In the constant struggle between prey and predators, plants can employ the most disgusting chemical methods to keep away vegetarians. Even so, co-evolution can make herbivores bypass these defenses. Such is the case of a species of fruit fly, Drosophila sechellia, for example, which enjoys the fruit of a Polynesian s... |
1 May 2007
17:06 GMT |
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Insects have muscles that can execute one of the fastest movements: wings moved at an astonishing frequency of 1,000 Hz is one example. This means that they need quick access to oxygen for such fast burning. New imaging technologies could solve a physiological paradox in this equation: how their respiratory system, ... |
30 April 2007
05:04 GMT |
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In order to understand the basics of how sex cells develop, classic lab animals, like mice and fruit flies are of no use. That's why a team at the University of Illinois focused on simpler creatures: planarians, a type of flatworms, as ideal models for the study of germ cells that develop in eggs and sperm in th... |
25 April 2007
05:31 GMT |
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Some lizards and insects lost sex (they reproduce by cloning). Other lizards have given rise to legless snakes and lizards. Cave fishes and amphibians lost their eyes. Apes lost their tails and humans fur. Ostriches and kiwi do not have functional wings; fleas lost their wings at all. Evolution often eliminates compl... |
25 April 2007
04:48 GMT |
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We possess an inner clock that assigns as to be either an owl or a lark. Another inner clock reacts to seasons, that's why for some the winter is a reason for joy, while for others it can mean depression. Now a team at the University of Edinburgh is focusing on the behavior and biology of primitive sheep breed ... |
23 April 2007
08:41 GMT |
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Hot sex means better sex, right?But for some, hotter could result in no reproduction at all...An overheated pea aphid won't be able to reproduce. In fact, it's not the insect, but its bacterial symbiont that fails. And all is on a single gene. "It's the first time a mutation in a symbiont has been show... |
20 April 2007
08:56 GMT |
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