TORONTO, March 2, 2011 — York University researchers have zeroed in on a genetic process that may allow ovarian cancer to resist chemotherapy.
Researchers in the university’s Faculty of Science & Engineering studied a tiny strand of our geneti…
One bad apple is all it takes to spoil the barrel. And one misfolded protein may be all that’s necessary to corrupt other proteins, forming large aggregations linked to several incurable neurodegenerative diseases such as Huntington’s, Parkinson…
University of Guelph researchers have finally figured out why female squirrels are so darn promiscuous. Turns out it has nothing to do with genes and everything to do with how many males are knocking at their door.
“Their behaviour is overwhel…
They are familiar scenes: politicians bemoaning the death of family values only for extramarital affairs to be unveiled or politicians preaching financial sacrifice while their expense accounts fatten up.
Moral corruption and power asymmetries ar…
DURHAM, N.C. — Long a staple of nature documentaries, the somewhat bizarre development of a grub-like pink marsupial embryo outside the mother’s womb is curious in another way.
Duke University researchers have found that the developmental progra…
EAST LANSING, Mich. — The discovery of a hormone acting like molecular glue could hold a key to bolstering plant immune systems and understanding how plants cope with environmental stress.
The study, which is featured in the Oct. 6 issue of Nat…
A Duke University ecologist is leading an international scientific reassessment of the causes and effects of desertification, a term he said has been subject to misinterpretation and oversimplification. In a new book he co-edited, and as organizer of a new ARIDnet research network that will study desertification worldwide, James F. Reynolds is seeking to better explain the interconnected factors that cause sensitive dry land environments to sometimes degrade to points of no return.
Greater insight into human brain disease may emerge from studies of a new genetic mutation that causes adult fruit flies to develop symptoms akin to Alzheimer’s disease. “This is the first fruit fly mutant to show some of the outward, physical manifestations common to certain major human neurodegenerative diseases,” said principal investigator Michael McKeown, a biology professor at Brown University. A research team found the mutation in a gene they named “blue cheese.”
The lowly and somewhat gruesome bloodworm may have a few lessons to teach material scientists.The critter apparently is the first ever to be found to use a copper-containing mineral structure as part of its skeleton. The finding is remarkable first because the amount of copper detected in the jaw tip of the marine worm would normally be toxic to an organism. Second, the copper also occurs in non-mineral form in the bloodworm jaw where it may act as a sort of bridge, cross-linking long chains of fibrous proteins. And that has appealing commercial posibilities. “The marriage of protein with copper mineral as well as with bound copper ions is an intriguing concept per se but may also serve as a design prototype for new materials that need to be hard, lightweight, and durable.”