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Nature’s Exciting Expectations for the New Year
It seems that Nature magazine has high hopes (and don’t we all) for research progress in 2010. Among goals such as glimpsing the origins of the universe and other Earth-like planets, the biological topics expected to make big impacts are: Stopping/preventing species loss globally Synthetic genome from pioneers such as Craig Venter A surge in [...]
Posted in Biology, Cell Biology, Ecology and Environmental Biology, Genetics, Genomics, Lists Also tagged Climate, Craig Venter, HIV, Stem cells 1943 Comments
Transgenic, Green Monkeys Provide Possibility of Primate Model Organisms
This story is a few months old, but I was reading through the Nature homepage and came across their selected Images of the Year slideshow. Many of these images have to do with various space-related or physics themes, but of particular interest to me when browsing through the images was a gorgeous image of fluorescent [...]
Posted in Biology, Genetics, Health & Medicine, Zoology Also tagged Genetics, Marmosets, Primates, Transgenics 4468 Comments
More Proof That Smoking Leads to Small-Cell Lung Cancer
In a Nature article published earlier this week, UK and US researchers have provided more proof that smoking has a direct effect on the development of small-cell lung cancer. This study describes 22,910 somatic mutations characterized by massively parallel sequencing technology (including 134 in highly important exon coding regions) in the small-cell lung cancer cell [...]
Posted in Biology, Cell Biology, Genetics, Genomics, Health & Medicine Also tagged Cancer, Cell Biology, Genetics, Genomics, Lung Cancer, Mutations 3398 Comments
New Insight About Why Chimpanzees Can’t Speak, But We Can
Why is it that humans can speak, but chimpanzees, with their >98% genetic identity to humans, can’t? For almost a decade scientists have known that the FOXP2 gene is responsible for the mendelian development of language in humans. Theories abound about how a mere 2 amino acid change may have been all that was needed [...]
Posted in Biology, Evolutionary Biology, Zoology Also tagged Chimpanzee, Evolution, FOXP2, Gene, Speech, Zoology 2051 Comments
New Fluorescence Microscopy Techniques Directly Image Drug Delivery
X Sunney Wei and others at Harvard University recently demonstrated a new technique for stimulated emission microscopy that allows high resolution imaging of generally non-fluorescent chromophores (such as drugs). This imaging technique relies on pumped laser sources and new techniques for obtaining the fluorescent emission streams. Use of this sort of microscopy could lead to [...]
Posted in Biology, Cell Biology, Microbiology, Microscopy Also tagged Harvard, Microscopy, Pharmaceuticals, STED 2135 Comments
Neurons May Be Up To 50% More Efficient Than Previously Thought
A recent publication in Nature has suggested that rather than being only 30% efficient, neurons, the workhorse cells of our brains, may be acting at up to 70-80% efficiency. This has heavy implications, considering that neurons consume approximately 20% of our body’s consumed energy. The question must now be asked: what exactly are those little [...]
Posted in Cell Biology, Health & Medicine, Microbiology Also tagged Biology, Cell Biology, Neurons 719 Comments
Whole Genome Duplications Are Potentially An Evolutionary Advantage
A study recently published in Nature suggests that whole genome duplications may have posed an evolutionary advantage in our ancient ancestors. This is a surprising discovery considering the rarity of contemporary whole genome duplications being preserved. These findings may provide insight into new “tactics” organisms use during the course of evolution. Read the original Nature [...]
Posted in Evolutionary Biology, Genomics Also tagged Evolution, Evolutionary Biology, Whole Genome Duplications 885 Comments
Inbreeding in Panda Population?: Extremely Rare Brown and White Panda Spotted