Posts for 'Biology' Category

Chemotherapy or radiation therapy leads to loss of stem cells that ends in anaemia, appetite and weight loss in cancer patients. The loss of adult stem cells is particularly dangerous, as they are the ones responsible for making new blood and intestine cells. Scientists have long known that during cancer therapy, the tumour suppressor p53 is activated, which leads cells to stop dividing, go into hibernation and undergo a programmed cell death called apoptosis.

They've also known that a gene called Puma is critical for p53 to initiate the cell death of DNA-damaged cells, reports Nature.  "You can target Puma to prevent p53-mediated depletion of adult stem cells, because a Puma deficiency does not promote the development of cancer," said Yang Xu at UC San Diego.

"If you can suppress Puma function, you can rescue a lot of the adult stem cells that would otherwise be lost after the accumulation of DNA damage such as during cancer therapy," he added. The team published its findings in this week's advance online issue of the journal Nature Cell Biology.

The aquatic amphibian is far more valuable now as a lab rat, used to study fundamental questions about the development of embryos. Blessed with the unusual ability to regrow the lens of its eye, and laying eggs big enough to study and manipulate, the frog is prized by scientists who want to explore things as diverse as birth defects and organ regeneration.

But unlike other workhorses of science, the frogs did not have a real home base. Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine, maintains different genetic strains of lab mice. The Bloomington Drosophila Stock Center at Indiana University collects and distributes lines of fruit flies. And the Zebrafish International Resource Center in Oregon stocks the fish. Now, a five-year, $3.4 million grant from the National Institutes of Health will support a national Xenopus center at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole.

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Biology is the study of life and comprises all levels from the molecular to the global. Biology is the study living organisms, their organization and their functions and biology is a large part of the way our environment evolved from simple organisms and is thus intimately part of our environment. Biology is a very broad field, covering the minute workings of chemical machines inside our cells, to broad scale concepts of ecosystems and global climate change. Biologists study subjects which range from intimate details of the human brain, the composition of our genes, and even the functioning of our reproductive system to the building blocks of the simplest organisms on earth which created our oxygen rich atmosphere capable of supporting higher life forms. Without biological processes you and I would not exist, nor the planet as we know it.

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A history of terrorism requires a very specific definition to avoid a never-ending summary of every violent act ever recorded. The brief, objective definition proposed by Dr. Boaz Ganor, an Israeli political scientist and deputy dean of the Lauder School of Government and Diplomacy at the Interdiciplinary Center Herzliya, works well for this purpose:terrorism is the intentional use of, or threat to use violence against civilians or against civilian targets, in order to attain politician aims.

This avoids subjective interpretation based on the perpetrator's motivations, tactics, and civilian versus military status. When we discuss terrorism in the 21st century, however, we must include weapons of mass destruction, and broaden the defintion slightly to include indiscriminate targets, since many of the weapons and tactics of modern terrorism are capable of killing huge numbers of people at once.

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The Biological Cycle Of Your First Fish Tank: One important thing when setting up an aquarium is patience. Nature's biological process takes from 4 to 6 weeks. Let me explain the Biological Process...The biological cycle happens when beneficial bacteria breaks down toxic organic compounds into less toxic compounds. Then we can manage these less toxic compounds through weekly water changes. The beneficial bacteria that we need to culture in the aquarium are called Nitrosomonas and Nitrobacter bacteria. Nitrosomonas bacteria break down deadly ammonia to less toxic nitrite.

Nitrobacter bacteria then convert nitrite to an even less toxic nitrate. These chemicals can only be detected with test kits. Algae blooms sometimes indicate excessive nitrates. The biological cycle starts when you put 2 or 3 very hardy fish into your new tank. These fish have small amounts of the bacteria in their digestive tract which they will release into the aquarium. Nitrosomonas and Nitrobacter bacteria live in the substrate of your tank. They need oxygen to live. That's why it's important to keep your power heads or air pumps working at all times. They pull air from the water through the gravel giving the bacteria a continuous supply of oxygen.

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The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) South Texas Center Emerging Infectious Diseases (STCEID), and Bernard Arulanandam, associate dean of research for scientific innovation in.

The UTSA College of Sciences, have been granted a U.S. patent for developing a process to create a vaccine for the deadly tularemia infection.

Tularemia, caused by the highly infectious bacterium Francisella tularensis, can cause serious disease in humans.

F. tularensis is carried primarily by animals such as rabbits and rarely causes human infections, but when breathed.

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They exhibit remarkable properties. They never complain. And you can kill off the ones you don't like at the end of the day. Those are just three of the reasons why genetically modified microorganisms could become some of.

The most valuable employees in the green revolution. Siluria, a startup that spun out of another startup called Cambrios Technologies, has proposed a way to convert natural gas into chemicals like ethylene with biologically inspired catalysts.

The catalysts, ideally, will reduce the time, energy and cost involved in producing chemicals. Siluria differs from mainstream chemistry companies in that it derives its catalysts from nature.

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Just how old is the scourge of the tropics, malaria? There's been intense debate among scientists, with some saying it evolved when humans began raising crops, 10,000 years ago, Others suggested it began assailing our ancestors even before they were anatomically modern humans, 300,000 years. But now scientists have shown that this sometimes deadly tropical disease evolved together with modern humans and moved with them as they migrated out of Africa between 60,000 and 80,000 years ago.

The research, published in the journal Current Biology, sequenced the largest collection of malaria parasites ever assembled. The international team, led by researchers at Imperial College London, were able to compare differences in those sequences which allowed them to recreate the progress of the malaria parasite across the tropics and to calculate its age.

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One important thing when setting up an aquarium is patience. Nature's biological process takes from 4 to 6 weeks. Let me explain the Biological Process...The biological cycle happens when beneficial bacteria breaks down toxic organic compounds into less toxic compounds. Then we can manage these less toxic compounds through weekly water changes. The beneficial bacteria that we need to culture in the aquarium are called Nitrosomonas and Nitrobacter bacteria. Nitrosomonas bacteria break down deadly ammonia to less toxic nitrite. Nitrobacter bacteria then convert nitrite to an even less toxic nitrate. These chemicals can only be detected with test kits. Algae blooms sometimes indicate excessive nitrates. The biological cycle starts when you put 2 or 3 very hardy fish into your new tank. These fish have small amounts of the bacteria in their digestive tract which they will release into the aquarium. Nitrosomonas and Nitrobacter bacteria live in the substrate of your tank. They need oxygen to live. That's why it's important to keep your power heads or air pumps working at all times. They pull air from the water through the gravel giving the bacteria a continuous supply of oxygen.

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He briefed White House staffers. He explained what he was going to announce to members of Congress and their staff. And he had worked all along with the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania. "We asked for an ethical review before we did the first experiment," Venter said in a telephone interview.

Venter is accustomed to making headlines and he is also familiar with the hyperbole that often accompanies his scientific announcements. So when he testifies Thursday to the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce, there will not be any surprises.

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