Daily Popular
- Enhancer RNA (eRNA): More powerful than previously thought
- lincRNA: A recently discovered RNA organizes stem cell differentiation
- Histones: DNA packaging and much more
- Four-letter codons: A new synthetic biology playground
- Hoogsteen base pairs: An alternate structure in DNA
- New for epigenetics: Active pseudogenes and RNA as gene regulator
- Back to the Future: Cars with hub motors
- Sci-Fi movie review: Splice
- Stem cell injection improves aging cells in mice
- Can culture change the genome?
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Tag Archives: molecular biology
New tool: Nanoneedle to the nucleus
For scientists, as for everybody else, it helps to see what’s happening. This is hard to do in the nucleus of a living cell. Standard techniques for watching the activity within the nucleus use dyes or protein markers. These work but tend to flood the nucleus with large molecules and disrupt the chemical activity. Recent [...]
Posted in News: Scientific Instruments Also tagged cell biology, nanoneedle, nanotechnology, nucleus, scientific instrument Leave a comment
Putting the impact of dementia in perspective
What constitutes a major disease? Percentage of population affected, certainly. Global prevalence, yes. Severity of effects, yes. Difficulty of treatment, perhaps. I wrestled with this question in thinking about creating a category of medical research that will have great impact on human life, an Impact Area. There are so many diseases. Unless you’re a medical [...]
Posted in Impact: Major Disease Cures Also tagged aging, Alzheimer, dementia, major disease, neurology, neuroscience, senescence, senility Leave a comment
Stem cells: Myc does much more
To put it mildly, not thinking beyond assumptions can lead to surprises. This also applies to science. For many years scientists thought that the gene known as Myc (“mick”) plays a role in causing cancer – an oncogene – and that was all it did. It does play a role in cancer; Myc somehow lengthens [...]
Posted in Impact: Stem Cells Also tagged cancer, cell biology, cell differentiation, GATA6, Myc, oncogene, pluripotent, protein, stem cell 1 Comment
A new field for medicine: Genetic risk intervention
If you’ve heard anything about personal genome testing, it’s that such tests can sometimes reveal people are carriers of genetic mutations that increase the risk of certain diseases. There are many examples with more added each year, such as the BRCA1/BRCA2 genes associated with breast and ovarian cancer. If you’re a woman whose genome has [...]
Posted in Impact: Major Disease Cures Also tagged BRCA1, BRCA2, gene, genome, mastectomy, personal genetics, prophylactic medicine, risk intervention 1 Comment
Promised cures that stay on the horizon
In this age of hyperbole and disingenuous narrative, it’s important to have keen and skeptical appraisal. This is true even (or especially) when it comes to life-saving cures and the promises of the end to various terrible afflictions. Part of the reason for skepticism is simply to manage expectations. The people developing or marketing their [...]
Posted in Impact: Major Disease Cures Also tagged Alzheimers, disease cure, drugs, genome, medical breakthrough, medical promises, miracle cure, Parkinsons Leave a comment
Observing dynamic molecular biology with PAINT
Scientific instrumentation has the ability to turn theory into observed fact. This is, of course, a very important part of the advance of scientific knowledge. Without the microscope, we might know nothing of the world beyond our eyesight, or at best, we could only guess about it. This sort of progress (and it is certainly [...]
Posted in News: Scientific Instruments Also tagged fluorophores, microscopy, nanoscale, PAINT, topography Leave a comment
New for epigenetics: Active pseudogenes and RNA as gene regulator
How is it that the human genome, with about 23,000 protein coding genes, can produce such a complicated organism as the human being, when the laboratory flatworm (C. elegans, a relatively simple organism) has about 20,000 coding genes? It seems fairly obvious that there must be something else at work in more complex organisms that [...]
Posted in Impact: Cell Biology Also tagged cancer, cell biology, ceRNA, DNA, epigenetics, genome, microRNA, mRNA, proteins, pseudogene, PTEN, PTENP1, RNA Leave a comment
The dynamic state of embryonic stem cells
Much of the work being done with stem cells is to find how they can be used – repair hearts, grow skin – that sort of thing. Another major effort goes into transforming adult (mature and already differentiated into specific types) cells back into one form or another of stem cell. This was prompted by [...]
Posted in News: Stem Cells Also tagged adult cells, differentiation, embryonic stem cells, founder cells Leave a comment
Nanotech spiders: On track with molecular robotics
You have to love it when the lead scientists on a project say: “You could imagine the spider carrying a drug and bonding to a two-dimensional surface like a cell membrane, finding the receptors and, depending on the local environment,” adds Yan, “triggering the activation of this drug.” Such applications, while intriguing, are decades or [...]
Posted in News: Nanotechnology Also tagged enzymatic DNA, fluorescence microscopy, nanomedicine, nanorobotics, nanotechnology, origami DNA, robot, robotics, spider Leave a comment
Learning the secrets of spider silk storage and spinning
Science has been trying to learn the secrets of spider silk – and imitate it – for a long time. It’s a worthy goal. Nothing else, artificial or natural, is quite like it. It has five times the tensile strength of steel and triple the strength of the best synthetic fibers. Scientists are beginning to [...]
Posted in News: Nanotechnology Also tagged crystalline structure, epoxy, NMR, protein, spider silk, synthetic materials, tensile strength Leave a comment
Epigenetics and introns: Life beyond DNA
The discovery and gradual elucidation of DNA and the genetic code over the last half century was certainly one of the most important achievements in science during that time – or arguably, any time. DNA and genetics also, rightfully, have dominated much of the thinking and interest in the biological sciences. So, without taking away [...]
A new layer of genetic information: DNA sub-code
To some it sounds like something out of a spy story – sub-codes within the genetic code. Ah the hidden code; Dan Brown would be proud of the discovery. The actual discovery is perhaps not so thrilling, but potentially much more important than novelistic entertainment. Two researchers, Professor Yves Barral (ETH Zurich, Switzerland), and Dr. [...]
Posted in News: DNA Decoding Also tagged cell biology, DNA, gene expression, genetics, regulation, RNA, sub-code, transcription, tRNA Leave a comment
Cell development: microRNA moves between cells
How do cells develop; how do tissues form? For example, what guides cells to form a heart? These are crucial questions for molecular biology and an area with decades of research that still feels like it’s just getting started. Case in point: Researchers at the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research (BTI, New York, USA) [...]
Posted in News: Cell Biology Also tagged cell development, differentiation, microRNA, pathway, RNA, signal Leave a comment
Evolution treats transcription factors differently than DNA
People with reddish hair have genes for that, but what gets the job done – that is, growing reddish hair – isn’t the DNA or gene, it’s the transcription of the genes by molecules of protein, mainly RNA polymerase transcribing into messenger RNA (mRNA), which takes the designs coded in DNA and guides the production [...]
Posted in News: Proteomics Also tagged DNA, epigenetics, evolution, genes, genetics, protein, proteomics, speciation, species, transcription, tRNA Leave a comment
Can culture change the genome?
Almost from the beginning of our knowledge of genetics, it’s been asked, “Can the way we (humans) live change our genetics?” These days this is much the same as asking if culture can change the genome. It’s actually a relatively old question. The question got its biggest boost from one who is now a boogeyman [...]
Brain memory is actively cleared
We forget, a lot. It’s always been assumed that we forget either because new information is coming in and ‘overwrites’ (replaces) older memories, or because memory just sort of degrades. There’s some kind of selection at work, of course, because some things we forget more readily than others. A new study by a team from [...]
Posted in News: Neuroscience Also tagged brain, memory, neurons, neuroscience, protein, Rac Leave a comment
For RNA, the junctions dictate geometry
Did you know that RNA (ribonucleic acid) has an anatomy? In fact, it has anatomical properties that are sometimes analogous to the human body; especially joints. Just like human joints such as the elbow, knee, and shoulder allow bending but only in certain directions; RNA has ‘joints’ (junctions) in its chemical structure, and these too [...]
Explaining how a protein can perform multiple roles
It’s been known for more than a decade that some cell proteins can carry out multiple functions. For example, it was discovered in 1999 that the protein TyrRS (explained shortly) participated not only in the building of enzymes, but also could function to stimulate the growth of blood vessels. Discovering that the same protein could [...]
Posted in Impact: Cell Biology Also tagged amino acid, blood, cell biology, proteins, tRNA Leave a comment
Basic finding: Proteins don’t need to unfold to change
We’re talking proteins in the cells of all living things. They don’t have to unfold to change shape. If that sounds cryptic, it’s because that finding is about some of the most fundamental processes of life, and we’re just beginning to learn about them. In this case, proteins – which are the building blocks of [...]
Posted in News: Cell Biology Also tagged amino acids, atomic chemistry, cell biology, chemical pathways, DNA, folding, proteins, RNA Leave a comment
Powerful peptide penetrates cancer cells
All too often cancer treatments are like taking a howitzer to a hunting party. The treatment might get the cancer, but there’s often a lot of collateral damage. That’s why, almost from the beginning of cancer research, the goal has been to find ways of stopping cancer without harming the rest of the body. Not [...]
Posted in News: Major Disease Cures Also tagged cancer, iRGD, major disease cures, nanotechnology, nanoworms, peptides Leave a comment
Genetically modified yeast cells as electronic circuits