The immune system`s T cells have the unique responsibilities of being both jury and executioner. They examine other cells for signs of disease, including cancers or infections, and, if such evidence is found, rid them from the body. Precisely how T cells shift so swiftly from one role to another, however, has been a mystery. In a new study, investigators at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Me...

Mother Nature has provided the lizard with a unique ability to regrow body tissue that is damaged or torn ― if its tail is pulled off, it grows right back. She has not been quite so generous with human beings. But we might be able to come close, thanks to new research from Tel Aviv University. Prof. Meital Zilberman of TAU`s Department of Biomedical Engineering has developed a new biological...

Scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Scripps Research Institute have uncovered the role played by the least-understood part of a first-responder molecule that rushes in to bind and repair breaks in DNA strands, a process that helps people avoid cancer. With this final piece of the puzzle in place, scientists can better understand how t...

Using yeast genetics and a novel scheme to selectively remove a single protein from the cell division process called meiosis, a cell biologist at The Florida State University found that when a key molecular player known as Pds5 goes missing, chromosomes fail to segregate and pair up properly, and birth defects such as Down syndrome can result. That discovery is groundbreaking, but so, too, is what...

UCSF researchers have successfully used protease inhibitors to restore to normal levels a key protein involved in early brain development. Reduced levels of that protein have been shown to cause the rare brain disorder lissencephaly, which is characterized by brain malformations, seizures, severe mental retardation and very early death in human infants. The findings offer a proof-of-principle, at ...

Researchers at the Carnegie Institution`s Department of Plant Biology have discovered a key missing link in the so-called signaling pathway for plant steroid hormones (brassinosteroids). Many important signaling pathways are relays of molecules that start at the cell surface and cascade to the nucleus to regulate genes. This discovery marks the first such pathway in plants for which all the steps ...

New research by scientists at UC Santa Barbara indicates a possible Antarctic location for ice that seemed to be missing at a key point in climate history 34 million years ago. The research, which has important implications for climate change, is described in a paper published today in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union. "Using data from prior geological...

The mode of reproduction seen in modern sharks is nearly 400 million years old. That is the conclusion drawn by Professor Per Erik Ahlberg, Uppsala University, from his discovery of a so-called "clasper" in a primitive fossil fish earlier this year. The research results are published in Nature. In February this year, a paper published in Nature by a team of Australian and British researc...

The sun is in the pits of a century-class solar minimum, and sunspots have been puzzlingly scarce for more than two years. Now, for the first time, solar physicists might understand why. At an American Astronomical Society press conference in Boulder, Colorado, researchers announced that a jet stream deep inside the sun is migrating slower than usual through the star`s interior, giving rise to the...

A heart muscle protein can replace its missing skeletal muscle counterpart to give mice with myopathy a long and active life, show Nowak et al. The findings will be published online on May 25, 2009 and will appear in the June 1, 2009 print issue of the Journal of Cell Biology. The contraction machinery protein, actin, exists in different forms in the adult heart and skeletal muscles. The heart for...