Kangaroos form an important niche in the tree of life, but until now their DNA had never been sequenced. In an article newly published in BioMed Central's open access journal Genome Biology, an international consortium of researchers present the first ...
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B chromosomes have a functional effect on sex determination in a species of cichlid fishes from Lake Victoria, according to a study by Japanese researchers to be published in open-access journal PLoS Genetics on August 18th, 2011. The researchers found...
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Over the past 530 million years, the vertebrate lineage branched out from a primitive jawless fish wriggling through Cambrian seas to encompass all the diverse forms of fish, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and mammals. Now researchers combing through the...
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U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) researchers have developed an inexpensive way to grade the ethanol potential of perennial grasses at the biorefinery's loading dock.
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers in Singapore have modified the DNA of one type of bacterium, Escherichia coli, to first sense the presence of another bacterium, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and then to explode, releasing a special kind of toxin that will kill ...
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Complex traits that help plants adapt to environmental challenges are likely influenced by variations in thousands of genes that are affected by both the plant's growth and the external environment, reports a team of researchers at the University of Ca...
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DNA construction, also known as DNA cloning or recombinant DNA technology - among a host of other terms - is one of the principal tools of modern biotechnology, used for a wide variety of purposes, including genetic studies, medical research, and the d...
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New genetic evidence presented by a team led by Indiana University biology doctoral graduate Benjamin Blackman confirms the eastern United States as the single geographic domestication site of modern sunflowers. Co-authors on the findings published thi...
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(PhysOrg.com) -- A team of researchers from the Department of Energy's BioEnergy Science Center has pinpointed a single, key gene in a microbe that could help streamline the production of biofuels from non-food sources.
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(PhysOrg.com) -- A team of researchers from the Department of Energy's BioEnergy Science Center has pinpointed a single, key gene in a microbe that could help streamline the production of biofuels from non-food sources.
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers Sebastian Greiss and Jason Chin of the Medical Research Council's Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, have succeeded in manipulating the DNA of a nematode such that a 21st protein was created and subsequently natu...
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers Sebastian Greiss and Jason Chin of the Medical Research Council's Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, have succeeded in manipulating the DNA of a nematode such that a 21st protein was created and subsequently natu...
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Like fine chefs, scientists are seemingly approaching a day when they will be able to make nearly any type of tissue from human embryonic stem cells. You need nerves or pancreas, bone or skin? With the right combination of growth factors, skill and pat...
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You're probably familiar with barcodes, those black and white stripes on most store items that bring about the familiar "beep" when scanned at checkout. They determine whether a scanned item is a gallon of milk or a can of tomato soup.
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Thousands of tonnes of toxic mercury are released into the environment every year. Much of this collects in sediment where it is converted into toxic methyl mercury, and enters the food chain ending up in the fish we eat. New research, published in Bio...
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One of the most vocal and ardent critics of the so-called 'arsenic life' experiment which was published in December 2010 was biologist Rosie Redfield from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. The science paper by NASA astrobiologist Felisa ...
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers working out of Norway's University of Oslo have discovered through sequencing the genome of the Atlantic cod that the fish doesn't have a gene critical to the immune system in most other vertebrae. The missing gene is one t...
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For decades, scientists have studied a laboratory mouse model that develops signs of the paralyzing disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) as they age. In a new study appearing in Nature Biotechnology, investigators at Nationwide Children's Hospit...
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Corn, as we know it, didn’t always exist. A Brigham Young University biology professor published a new study that identified the functions of a gene that may have helped transform a wild grass called "teosinte" into modern-day cor...
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Our bodies are perfectly capable of renewing billions of cells every day but fail miserably when it comes to replacing damaged organs such as kidneys. Using the flatworm Schmidtea mediterranea—famous for its capacity to regrow complete animals fro...
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