March 14, 2010, 8:17 PM CT

Opium poppy's biggest secret

Scientists at the University of Calgary have discovered the unique genes that allow the opium poppy to make codeine and morphine, thus opening doors to alternate methods of producing these effective painkillers either by manufacturing them in a lab or controlling the production of these compounds in the plant.

"The enzymes encoded by these two genes have eluded plant biochemists for a half-century," says Peter Facchini, professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, who has dedicated his career to studying the unique properties of the opium poppy. "In finding not only the enzymes but also the genes, we've made a major step forward. It's equivalent in finding a gene involved in cancer or other inherited disorders".

The researchers' findings will be published in a paper entitled Dioxygenases catalyze the O-demethylation steps of morphine biosynthesis in opium poppy, appearing in the on-line edition of Nature Chemical Biology (http://www.nature.com/nchembio/index.html) on Sun., Mar. 14 at 2 pm ET / 6 pm London time.

Codeine is by far the most widely used opiate in the world and one of the most usually used painkillers. Codeine can be extracted directly from the plant, most codeine is synthesized from the much more abundant morphine found in opium poppy. Codeine is converted by an enzyme in the liver to morphine, which is the active analgesic and a naturally occurring compound in humans. Canadians spend more than $100 million every year on codeine-containing pharmaceutical products and are among the world's top consumers of the drug per capita. Despite this, Canada imports all of its opiates from other countries......... Posted by: Erica      Read more         Source

March 14, 2010, 8:13 PM CT

Sequencing Hydra genome

UC Irvine scientists have played a leading role in the genome sequencing of Hydra, a freshwater polyp that has been a staple of biological research for 300 years.

In the March 14 online version of Nature, UCI biologists Robert Steele and Hans Bode, along with nine other UCI researchers and an international team of researchers, describe the genome sequence of an organism that continues to advance research on regeneration, stem cells and patterning.

The team discovered Hydra to have about the same number of genes as humans, sharing a number of of the same ones. Surprisingly, they also found genes linked with Huntington's disease and with the beta-amyloid plaque formation seen in Alzheimer's disease two areas in which UCI has traditionally strong research programs suggesting the possible use of Hydra as a research model for these two diseases.

"Having the Hydra genome sequenced also enhances our ability to use it to learn more about the basic biology of stem cells, which are showing great promise for new therapys for a host of injuries and diseases," said Steele, associate professor and interim chair in biological chemistry.

Started in 2004, the Hydra project is the first genome sequencing effort in which UCI researchers have played a major role. The sequencing was carried out at the J. Craig Venter Institute and was funded by the National Human Genome Research Institute......... Posted by: Janet      Read more         Source

March 12, 2010, 7:41 AM CT

Why female moths are big and beautiful?

In most animal species, males and females show obvious differences in body size. But how can this be, given that both sexes share the same genes governing their growth? University of Arizona entomologists studied this conundrum in moths and found clues that had been overlooked by prior efforts to explain this mystery of nature.

Take a look around in the animal world and you will find that, in most organisms, individuals of one sex are larger than the other of the species.

Even though evolutionary biologists have long recognized this discrepancy, called sexual dimorphism, they have struggled for decades to solve a major paradox: How can males and females of one species be of different sizes, given that they share the same genetic blueprints dictating their development and growth?

Scientists from the University of Arizona have discovered that the key to unraveling this mystery lies in the early developmental stages during which the sexes begin to grow apart and that females can respond to selection on size almost twice as fast as can males.

Their findings are published online before print in Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series B

"In mammals, the males tend to be larger because there is an advantage in being bigger and stronger when it comes to fighting over who gets the female," explained Craig Stillwell, main author of the study and a UA Center for Insect Science postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Goggy Davidowitz, an assistant professor of entomology at the UA......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

March 12, 2010, 7:31 AM CT

600 million-year-old origins of vision

By studying the hydra, a member of an ancient group of sea creatures that is still flourishing, researchers at UC Santa Barbara have made a discovery in understanding the origins of human vision. The finding is published in this week's issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, a British journal of biology.

Hydra are simple animals that, along with jellyfish, belong to the phylum cnidaria. Cnidarians first emerged 600 million years ago.

"We determined which genetic 'gateway,' or ion channel, in the hydra is involved in light sensitivity," said senior author Todd H. Oakley, assistant professor in UCSB's Department of Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology. "This is the same gateway that is used in human vision".

Oakley explained that there are a number of genes involved in vision, and that there is an ion channel gene responsible for starting the neural impulse of vision. This gene controls the entrance and exit of ions; i.e., it acts as a gateway.

The gene, called opsin, is present in vision among vertebrate animals, and is responsible for a different way of seeing than that of animals like flies. The vision of insects emerged later than the visual machinery found in hydra and vertebrate animals.

"This work picks up on earlier studies of the hydra in my lab, and continues to challenge the misunderstanding that evolution represents a ladder-like march of progress, with humans at the pinnacle," said Oakley. "Instead, it illustrates how all organisms humans included are a complex mix of ancient and new characteristics"......... Posted by: Janet      Read more         Source

March 12, 2010, 7:27 AM CT

Myths about Amazon rain forests

A new NASA-funded study has concluded that Amazon rain forests were remarkably unaffected in the face of once-in-a-century drought in 2005, neither dying nor thriving, contrary to a previously published report and claims by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

"We found no big differences in the greenness level of these forests between drought and non-drought years, which suggests that these forests appears to be more tolerant of droughts than we previously thought," said Arindam Samanta, the study's main author from Boston University.

The comprehensive study reported in the current issue of the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters used the latest version of the NASA MODIS satellite data to measure the greenness of these vast pristine forests over the past decade.

A study reported in the journal Science in 2007 claimed that these forests actually thrive from drought because of more sunshine under cloud-less skies typical of drought conditions. The newly released study observed that those results were flawed and not reproducible.

"This newly released study brings some clarity to our muddled understanding of how these forests, with their rich source of biodiversity, would fare in the future in the face of twin pressures from logging and changing climate," said Boston University Prof. Ranga Myneni, senior author of the newly released study......... Posted by: Erica      Read more         Source

March 11, 2010, 11:06 PM CT

Yellow fever strikes monkey populations

A group of Argentine scientists, including health experts from the Wildlife Conservation Society, have announced that yellow fever is the culprit in a 2007-2008 die-off of howler monkeys in northeastern Argentina, a finding that underscores the importance of paying attention to the health of wildlife and how the health of people and wild nature are so closely linked.

The paperappearing in a recent edition of the American Journal of Primatologyfocuses on yellow fever outbreaks that were documented in several howler monkey populations of Misiones Province, Argentina. The epidemics, which caused the death of dozens of rare howler monkeys, signaled the need for a human vaccination program in the region to save lives.

The authors of the study include: Ingrid Holzmann and Mario S. Di Bitetti of the Argentine Council for Science and Technology (CONICET); Ilaria Agostini of the Universidad de Roma and CNR; Juan Ignacio Areta of Grupo FALCO; and Hebe Ferreyra and Pablo Beldomenico of the Wildlife Conservation Society.

"The outbreak has tragic conservation implications for the endangered brown howler monkey, one of the two species affected, which is highly threatened primarily by habitat destruction, hunting, and now disease," said Dr. Pablo Beldomenico. "The study also points out the importance of wildlife as a critically important indicator of health and disease processes which can help protect people too."........ Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

March 10, 2010, 8:20 AM CT

Hidden habits and movements of insect pests

For a high-resolution image of the Asota caricae moth referenced in the article, visit http://bit.ly/aB4PEb. The moth has a two-inch wingspan and a 2,500 mile distribution. Image is courtesy of Lauren Helgen, Smithsonian Institution. For a copy of the research paper, contact Jeff Falk at jfalk@umn.edu.

Contacts: Peggy Rinard, College of Biological Sciences, rinar001@umn.edu, (612) 624-0774.

Jeff Falk, University News Service, jfalk@umn.edu, (612) 626-1720.

MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (03/09/2010) -University of Minnesota researcher George Weiblen and his colleagues have found a faster way to study the spread and diet of insect pests.

Using a technique called DNA barcoding, which involves the identification of species from a short DNA sequence, Weiblen and an international team of scientists studied populations of numerous moth and butterfly species across Papua New Guinea. DNA barcodes showed that migratory patterns and caterpillar diets are very dynamic. In one case, a tiny moth that is distributed from Taiwan to Australia, has recently crossed thousands of miles of Pacific Ocean.

The research, "Population genetics of ecological communities with DNA barcodes: An example from New Guinea Lepidoptera," was reported in the Early Online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on March 1......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

March 9, 2010, 8:30 AM CT

Musk Ox Population Decline Due to Climate

team of researchers has discovered that the drastic decline in Arctic musk ox populations that began roughly 12,000 years ago was due to a warming climate rather than to human hunting. "This is the first study to use ancient musk ox DNA collected from across the animal's former geographic range to test for human impacts on musk ox populations," said Beth Shapiro, the Shaffer Career Development assistant professor of biology at Penn State University and one of the team's leaders. "We observed that, eventhough human and musk ox populations overlapped in a number of regions across the globe, humans probably were not responsible for the decline and eventual extinction of musk oxen across much of their former range." The team's findings would be reported in the 8 March 2010 issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Musk oxen once were plentiful across the entire Northern Hemisphere, but they now exist almost solely in Greenland and number only about 80,000 to 125,000. As per the researchers, musk oxen are not the only animals to suffer during the late Pleistocene Epoch. "The late Pleistocene was marked by rapid environmental change as well as the beginning of the spread of humans across the Northern Hemisphere," said Shapiro. "During that time several animals became extinct, including mammoths and woolly rhinoceroses, while others, including horses, caribou, and bison, survived into the present. The reasons for these drastically different survival patterns have been debated widely, with some researchers claiming that the extinctions were due largely to human hunting. Musk oxen provide a unique opportunity to study this question because they suffered from a decline in their population that coincided with the Pleistocene extinctions, yet they still exist today, which allows us to compare the genetic diversity of today's individuals with those individuals that lived up to 60,000 years ago"......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

March 8, 2010, 9:09 AM CT

Snake venom charms science world

The King Cobra continues to weave its charm with scientists identifying a protein in its venom with the potential for new drug discovery and to advance understanding of disease mechanisms.

The novel protein named haditoxin has been described in the prestigious Journal of Biological Chemistry (March 12, 2010).

The editorial board of the journal has selected this work as the "Paper of the Week" recognising it as being in the top one per cent of their published articles in terms of significance and overall importance.

Haditoxin was discovered in Professor Manjunatha Kini's laboratory at the National University of Singapore. Co-author of the paper Dr S. Niru Nirthanan, now at Griffith University on the Gold Coast, has characterised the pharmacological actions of haditoxin.

Dr Nirthanan said that haditoxin was structurally unique and therefore expected to have unique pharmacological properties.

"This toxin is like a conjoined twin. It is a relatively large complex made up of two identical protein molecules known as three-finger toxins associated withgether."

"We know that the family of three-finger toxins display diverse biological actions on the human nervous system, cardiovascular system and blood clotting. Some have directly led to the development of compounds with potent analgesic and blood pressure reducing properties so it is likely that haditoxin in its 'conjoined twin' state or as individual components will offer us more novel insights," he said......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

February 25, 2010, 2:52 AM CT

Tree-dwelling mammals climb to the heights of longevity

The squirrels littering your lawn with acorns as they bound overhead will live to plague your yard longer than the ones that aerate it with their burrows, as per a University of Illinois study.

Researchers know from prior studies that flying birds and bats live longer than earthbound animals of the same size. Milena Shattuck and Scott Williams, doctoral candidates in anthropology, decided to take a closer look at the relationship between habitat and lifespan in mammals, comparing terrestrial and treetop life. They published their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The two hypothesized that, like flight, treetop or arboreal dwelling reduces a species' extrinsic mortality - death from predation, disease and environmental hazards; that is, causes other than age.

"One of the predictions of the evolutionary theory of aging is that if you can reduce sources of extrinsic mortality, you'll end up exposing some of the late-acting mutations to natural selection, and therefore evolve longer lifespans," Williams said.

Williams and Shattuck observed that for arboreality, the theory holds. Mammals who spend the majority of their time up a tree enjoy longevity over those who scurry along the ground. The pattern holds consistent both on the large scale among all mammals, and also in specific classes the pair studied, such as tree squirrels versus ground squirrels......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source