Molecular Partnership Controls Daily Rhythms, Body Metabolism:
A research team led by Mitchell Lazar, MD, PhD, Director of the Institute for Diabetes, Obesity, and Metabolism at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, has discovered a key molecular partnership that coordinates body rhythms and metabolism. Lazar and his colleagues, including the study's first author, Penn Veterinary Medicine doctoral student Theresa Alenghat, studied a protein called NCoR that modulates the body's responses to metabolic hormones. They engineered a mutation into mice that prevents NCoR from working with an enzyme that is normally its partner, HDAC3. These animals showed changes in the expression of clock and metabolic genes, and were leaner, more sensitive to insulin, and on different sleep-wake cycles than controls.
Flexibility Trumps Fitness In Sexual Reproduction, Says New Theory In Evolutionary Biology:
The utility of sex, according to an intriguing new theory of evolutionary biology, may be its ability to promote genes that play well with many other partners rather than those that shine with just one specific set of genes. This idea of genetic mixability, described in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of Nov. 24, hits on the difficulty evolutionary biologists have had in understanding sex, specifically its role in population genetics and Darwin's survival-of-the-fittest mantra.
Bio-inspired Wing Design To Revolutionize Aircraft Flight:
It's a bird, it's a plane, it's ... both! While aircraft have always borne a resemblance to their feathered counterparts in the sky, new research at U of T is bringing the two even closer together. Inspired by nature, mechanical engineering professor Shaker Meguid is currently developing aircraft wing designs that imitate the amazing flight of birds by altering the planform of the wings in order to optimize the aerodynamics for a given flight stage.
Why We Remember Important Things And Forget Trivia: Neuron's Synapses Remodel Themselves:
Where would we be without our ability to remember important information or, for that matter, to forget irrelevant details? Thanks to the flexibility of the nerve cell's communication units, called synapses, we are good at both. Up to now, only the receiving side of a synapse was believed to play an active role in this reorganization of the brain, which is thought to underlie our ability to learn but also to forget.
Solar-powered Sea-slugs Live Like Plants:
The lowly sea slug, "Elysia chlorotica," may not seem like the most exciting of creatures, but don't be fooled: it behaves like a plant and is solar-powered, says a Texas A&M University biologist who has been studying these tiny creatures for the past decade and, along with collaborators from several universities, has identified a possible cause of their ability to behave like plants.
Epigenetics: Plants Display 'Molecular Amnesia':
Plant researchers from McGill University and the University of California, Berkeley, have announced a major breakthrough in a developmental process called epigenetics. They have demonstrated for the first time the reversal of what is called epigenetic silencing in plants.
Keeping Chromosomes From Cuddling Up:
If chromosomes snuggle up too closely at the wrong times, the results can be genetic disaster. Now researchers have found the molecular machines in fruit flies that yank chromosomes, the DNA-carrying structures, apart when necessary
Rivers Are Carbon Processors, Not Inert Pipelines:
Microorganisms in rivers and streams play a crucial role in the global carbon cycle that has not previously been considered. Freshwater ecologist Dr. Tom Battin, of the University of Vienna, told a COST ESF Frontiers of Science conference in October that our understanding of how rivers and streams deal with organic carbon has changed radically.
Dolphin Population Stunted By Fishing Activities, Study Finds:
Despite broad "dolphin safe" practices, fishing activities have continued to restrict the growth of at least one Pacific Ocean dolphin population, a new report led by a researcher at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego has concluded.
Scientists Produce Illusion Of Body Swapping:
Cognitive neuroscientists at the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet (KI) have succeeded in making subjects perceive the bodies of mannequins and other people as their own.
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