Category Archives: News & Archives

Male or female? First sex-determining genes appeared in mammals some 180 million years ago

Man or woman? Male or female? In humans and other mammals, the difference between sexes depends on one single element of the genome: the Y chromosome. It is present only in males, where the two sexual chromosomes are X and Y, whereas women have two X chromosomes. Thus, the Y is ultimately responsible for all…

Impact glass from asteroids and comets stores biodata for millions of years

Bits of plant life encapsulated in molten glass by asteroid and comet impacts millions of years ago give geologists information about climate and life forms on the ancient Earth. Scientists exploring large fields of impact glass in Argentina suggest that what happened on Earth might well have happened on Mars millions of years ago. Martian…

Living organ regenerated for first time: Thymus rebuilt in mice

A team of scientists at the University of Edinburgh has succeeded in regenerating a living organ for the first time. The team rebuilt the thymus -- an organ in the body located next to the heart that produces important immune cells. Immune repair The advance could pave the way for new therapies for people with…

Tiny, Logical Robots Injected into Cockroaches

Nanotechnology just got a little bit smarter. At the Institute of Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials at Israel's Bar-Ilan University, Ido Bachelet led a team of scientists in building tiny robots that can respond to chemical cues and operate inside a living animal. More than that, they can operate as logic gates, essentially acting as real…

A Cure for Ageing? David Sinclair talks about the fight against aging

Can we really cure ageing? David Sinclair thinks so, and he's going to try to prove it. David Sinclair is a scientist and entrepreneur working on increasing human health, productivity, and lifespan. After co-discovering a molecular cause of aging at the Massachusetts Institute in Boston in the mid-1990s, he joined the faculty of Harvard Medical…

Erasing a genetic mutation: Researchers reverse a liver disorder in mice by correcting a mutated gene

Using a new gene-editing system based on bacterial proteins, MIT researchers have cured mice of a rare liver disorder caused by a single genetic mutation. The findings, described in the March 30 issue of Nature Biotechnology, offer the first evidence that this gene-editing technique, known as CRISPR, can reverse disease symptoms in living animals. CRISPR, which…

BIOESSAYS: Why do the well-fed appear to die young?

Dietary restriction adaptively up-regulates cellular recycling mechanisms (e.g. autophagy, apoptosis) to increase resource efficiency and promote immediate reproduction. Old-age pathologies, such as cancer, are reduced as a side effect, extending lifespan in benign laboratory environments. Such benefits are unlikely to translate to the wild, where extrinsic mortality risk is high. In this video, Margo Adler…

First comprehensive atlas of human gene activity

A large international consortium of researchers has produced the first comprehensive, detailed map of the way genes work across the major cells and tissues of the human body. The findings describe the complex networks that govern gene activity, and the new information could play a crucial role in identifying the genes involved with disease. "Now,…

When Did Earth’s First Whiffs of Oxygen Emerge?

Today's climate change doesn't hold a candle to the chemical warfare waged on Earth more than 2 billion years ago. Before plants discovered the power of photosynthesis, single-celled life survived on chemicals, not sunlight, burning through hydrogen, methane and sulfur, among other yummy compounds. These "anaerobes" that live without oxygen were poisoned when blue-green algae…

Vast gene-expression map yields neurological, environmental stress insights

A consortium led by scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has conducted the largest survey yet of how information encoded in an animal genome is processed in different organs, stages of development, and environmental conditions. Their findings paint a new picture of how genes function in the nervous…