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Extracting a cell from a budding human embryo can expose genetic defects, but does it actually help generate more healthy babies? Bruce Goldman investigates.
Is parachuting into the Amazonian jungle any way to save an ecosystem? One team of biologists thinks so. Thomas Hayden joined them on a trip to Peru to find out what they do.
If handled appropriately, data about Internet-based communication and interactivity could revolutionize our understanding of collective human behaviour.
The spiciness of foods such as horseradish is perceived through sensory neurons of the pain pathway. The lingering pungency of some such foods results from chemical modification of the channels that trigger these neurons.
Put two types of crystal together in one lattice, and the resulting material can have properties greater than the sum of those of its individual components. Until now, that's been a difficult trick to pull off on a large scale.
The behaviour of water in the atmosphere is a poorly understood part of the hydrological cycle. Applying the principles of isotope chemistry to satellite data provides a powerful approach for improving the situation.
Despite gold's reputation as an inert element, chemists have mined a rich seam of catalytic reactions that use this metal. The latest example stakes out gold's claim as a versatile catalyst.
Which end of a fly embryo becomes the head is partly dictated by the accumulation of bicoid RNA at the anterior pole. The protein that amasses the RNA turns out to be an old acquaintance from a different context.
Electrical circuits might be regarded as rather mundane pieces of classical engineering. But their electromagnetic fields are, like light, a quantum object whose energy comes in discrete units — photons.
Production of stomata, the gas-exchange structure in plants, requires asymmetric cell division and cell type differentiation in an orderly manner. Identification of a key switch gene for the fate transition of stomatal precursor cells revealed a compelling view that consecutive actions of three closely related bHLH proteins control stomatal differentiation, a mechanism strikingly similar to cell-type differentiation in animals.
The structure of TPP1's oligonucleotide binding fold contains features that are particularly characteristic of TEBPβ. When the POT1–TPP1 complex is bound to telomeric DNA, it does not inhibit telomerase activity, as other telomere binding proteins do. Instead, the presence of POT1–TPP1 unexpectedly stimulates telomerase activity and processivity.
The atmospheres of extrasolar giant planets orbiting close to their parent stars are heated by the immense stellar irradiation. For the planet HD 209458b, this causes a sizable expansion of the atmosphere, and escape of neutral hydrogen gas. This paper reports the detection of absorption by hot hydrogen in the atmosphere of HD 209458b, probing a layer where the escaping gas forms in HD 209458b's upper atmosphere.
A special version of a cavity quantum electrodynamics system, namely one that is embedded within an electronic circuit has been constructed. A superconducting quantum bit interacts with photons from a microwave transmission line. A novel regime can be obtained with this system, namely the strong dispersive limit, where a single photon has a large effect on the qubit without ever being absorbed.
A new approach that uses complementary metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistor compatible technology is reported, and demonstrates the specific label-free detection of below 100 femtomolar concentrations of antibodies as well as real-time monitoring of the cellular immune response.
Biofilms are specialized environments where one might predict that evolution demands intense interactions between bacteria. However, by using two species, this paper demonstrates that genomic changes occur to favour species working together to enhance fitness.
A set of three paralogous bHLH transcription factors is required to promote stomatal development. SPEECHLESS, MUTE and FAMA are sequentially expressed in, and are successively required for, the initiation, proliferation and terminal differentiation of cells in the stomatal lineage.
Although bicoid mRNA, the anterior determinant of Drosophila, was identified almost 20 years ago, the mechanism of its localization is still largely unclear. Here it is shown that the ESCRT-II complex, known for its role in endosomal protein sorting, also binds specifically to bicoid RNA and is necessary for its localization.
The structure of TPP1's oligonucleotide binding fold contains features that are particularly characteristic of TEBPβ. When the POT1–TPP1 complex is bound to telomeric DNA, it does not inhibit telomerase activity, as other telomere binding proteins do. Instead, the presence of POT1–TPP1 unexpectedly stimulates telomerase activity and processivity.