Biology-blog.com Archive page

Gene in male fish lures females

A gene has been found in male cichlid fish that evolved to lure female fish so that male cichlids can deposit sperm in the females mouths. A study in the online open access journal BMC Biology reveals that the gene is linked to egg-like markings on the fins of cichlid fishes and uncovers the evolutionary history of these markings, which are central to the success of the fishes' exotic oral mating behaviour. Walter Salzburger, Ingo Braasch........Go to the Animal-science-blog (Added on 11/14/2007 9:56:44 PM)

Evolution of strange amphibian breeding habits

Parasites can decimate amphibian populations, but one University of Georgia researcher believes they might also play a role in spurring the evolution of new and sometimes bizarre breeding strategies. Brian Todd, a researcher at the UGA Odum School of Ecology Savannah River Ecology Lab, explains that most amphibians start their lives in water (tadpoles are a good example), and then make their way onto land as adults and return to the water to........Go to the Animal-science-blog (Added on 11/14/2007 9:33:58 PM)

Simple reason helps males evolve more quickly

The observation that males evolve more quickly than females has been around since 19th century biologist Charles Darwin noted the majesty of a peacocks tail feather in comparison with the plainness of the peahens. No matter the species, males apparently ramp up flashier features and more melodious warbles in an eternal competition to win the best mates, a concept known as sexual selection. Why males are in evolutionary overdrive even........Go to the Animal-science-blog (Added on 11/14/2007 8:52:46 PM)

Microbes Churn Out Hydrogen

By adding a few modifications to their successful wastewater fuel cell, scientists have coaxed common bacteria to produce hydrogen in a new, efficient way. Bruce Logan and his colleagues at Penn State University had already shown success at using microbes to produce electricity. Now, using starter material that could theoretically be sourced from a salad bar, the scientists have coaxed those same microbes to generate hydrogen. By tweaking........Go to the Biology-blog (Added on 11/13/2007 9:43:57 PM)

Citrus juice, vitamin C give staying power to green tea

To get more out of your next cup of tea, just add juice. A study observed that citrus juices enable more of green tea's unique antioxidants to remain after simulated digestion, making the pairing even healthier than previously thought. The study compared the effect of various beverage additives on catechins, naturally occurring antioxidants found in tea. Results suggest that complementing green tea with either citrus juices or vitamin C........Go to the Plant-science-blog (Added on 11/13/2007 8:56:07 PM)

Human ancestors: more gatherers than hunters?

Chimpanzees crave roots and tubers even when food is plentiful above ground, as per a new study that raises questions about the relative importance of meat for brain evolution. Appearing online the week of Nov. 12 in the early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study documents a novel use of tools by chimps to dig for tubers and roots in the savanna woodlands of western Tanzania. The chimps eagerness for........Go to the Animal-science-blog (Added on 11/12/2007 9:50:16 PM)

Fruit Fly Gives Clues To Genetic Adaptation

Cornell scientists have played a major role in an international scientific team that has compared the complete set of genes of 12 closely related fruit fly species. As well has having implications for human health -- from genetic adaptation to evolving immune systems -- the analysis paves the way for better understanding the evolution of each species. From the results of the research, the Cornell researchers coordinated one of the two papers........Go to the Animal-science-blog (Added on 11/8/2007 9:44:19 PM)

Biologists Assemble Fly mtDNA for Landmark Genome Project

Brown University biologist David Rand and members of his lab have made a major contribution to a groundbreaking genome sequencing project - single-handedly assembling the mitochondrial DNA sequences of seven species of fruit fly. The work, appearing in Nature, is part of an international research effort to catalogue the DNA sequences of 12 species of Drosophila, or fruit fly, a critical and common laboratory model used to study human........Go to the Animal-science-blog (Added on 11/7/2007 8:18:14 PM)

Prairie verbena: conserves water, drought-tolerant

Prairie verbena, a common wildflower, grows from the Mississippi River to Arizona and from Southern Mexico to South Dakota. This beautiful native plant can be seen covering large areas of plains, prairies, pastures, and roadsides, often from March through October. Working to create a new drought-resistant and water-saving wildflower, researchers at Texas Tech University's Department of Plant and Soil Science have introduced 'Raider........Go to the Plant-science-blog (Added on 11/7/2007 8:01:40 PM)

Macleania insignis

Today''s entry and written accompaniment are both courtesy of Tom Lemieux of the University of Colorado at Boulder. Very much appreciated, Tom – I''m so busy these days that having someone else share the writing is a real treat. This is also a good time to remind folks that photographs taken by people not from UBC are copyright of the respective owner of the image and use is permitted by whatever license the photographer chooses to apply........Go to the Plant-science-blog (Added on 11/6/2007 10:10:36 PM)

Kids have a compass, but adults have the map

Even bird brains can get to know an entire continent -- but it takes them a year of migration to do so, suggests a Princeton research team. The researchers have shown that migrating adult sparrows can find their way to their winter nesting grounds even after being thrown off course by thousands of miles, adjusting their flight plan to compensate for the displacement. However, similarly displaced juvenile birds, which have still not made the........Go to the Animal-science-blog (Added on 11/5/2007 8:14:39 PM)

Divers find new species in Aleutians

There are unknown creatures lurking under the windswept islands of the Aleutians, as per a team of scientific divers from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. This summer, while completing the second phase of a two-year broad scientific survey of the waters around the Aleutian Islands, researchers have discovered what may be three new marine organisms. This year's dives surveyed the western region of the Aleutians, from Attu to Amlia Island,........Go to the Animal-science-blog (Added on 11/4/2007 8:11:26 PM)

Multidrug Resistance Transporters

Ever since the discovery of penicillin, we have lived our lives with far less fear of infectious disease. In the decades since then, a wide variety of drugs have been isolated from natural sources or synthesized by chemists, giving our doctors a large arsenal of antibiotics to fight infection. Bacteria, however, are dynamic evolving organisms, and they have developed many methods to fight back. In some cases, they develop ways to destroy........Go to the Biology-blog (Added on 11/1/2007 7:42:19 PM)

The Inner Life Of The Cell

The Inner Life of the Cell is an animation by Alain Viel and Robert Lue of Harvard University. It vividly illustrates the mechanisms that allow a white blood cell to sense its surroundings and respond to an external stimulus. This animation explores the different cellular environments in which these communications take place.(via Dark Roasted Blend)........Go to the Biology-blog (Added on 11/1/2007 6:53:06 PM)

Tangled web of the insect, plant and parasite arms race

New insights into the evolutionary relationship between plant-dwelling insects and their parasites are revealed in the online open access journal BMC Biology. Scientists shed light on how sawflies evolved to escape their parasites and gain themselves an 'enemy-free space' for millions of years. Tommi Nyman of the University of Joensuu in Finland together with colleagues from Sweden and Gera number of uncovered a food web involving willow........Go to the Animal-science-blog (Added on 10/31/2007 9:05:50 PM)

Go nano, natural and green

In 2002, U.S. farmers harvested 2.7 billion bushels of soybeans. Last year in Missouri, farmers harvested 194 million bushels of soybeans worth about $1.2 billion. Now, a team of scientists at the University of Missouri-Columbia is turning those soybeans into gold, with nothing more than a little water. MU scientists Kattesh Katti, Raghuraman Kannan, and Kavita Katti led a team of researchers that have discovered how to make gold........Go to the Plant-science-blog (Added on 10/31/2007 8:08:40 PM)

Origin of life on primitive Earth?

Experiments show that simple molecules can combine chemically rather than biologically to form the building blocks of DNA, the key component of all life forms. These processes might have taken place on primitive earth, but how they occur is an unsolved puzzle. Chemists at the University of Georgia have now proposed the first detailed, feasible mechanism to explain how adenine, one of the four building blocks of DNA, might be built up from........Go to the Biology-blog (Added on 10/30/2007 10:27:45 PM)

Gene that gives dogs black fur

A discovery about the genetics of coat color in dogs could help explain why humans come in different weights and vary in our abilities to cope with stress, a team led by scientists from the Stanford University School of Medicine reports. The study, reported in the Nov. 2 issue of Science, answers a longtime mystery: What determines coat color in dogs" While scientists have known since the 1900s that most mammals share the same genetic........Go to the Animal-science-blog (Added on 10/30/2007 10:20:58 PM)

Lithium dramatically increases lifespan in worms

ematode worms treated with lithium show a 46 percent increase in lifespan, raising the tantalizing question of whether humans taking the mood affecting drug are also taking an anti-aging medication. Results of the Buck Institute study, led by faculty member Gordon J. Lithgow, PhD, are currently published online in the Journal of Biological Chemistry. Lithium has been used to treat mood affective disorders, including bipolar disease for........Go to the Animal-science-blog (Added on 10/30/2007 10:03:01 PM)

Role of growth factor in vertebrae formation

he Stowers Institutes Pourqui Lab has demonstrated the role of fibroblast growth factor (FGF) in the embryonic process of somitogenesis, an event mandatory for vertebrae formation, in a paper posted to the Web site of the journal Development. The paper will appear in the November print issue of the journal. The Pourqui Lab has long studied the formation of vertebrae, and the lab team has made significant contributions to the currently........Go to the Animal-science-blog (Added on 10/30/2007 10:01:25 PM)

Cutting-edge DNA 'fin-printing' project for salmon

Some salmon make one heck of a commute. The record holder in the Pacific Northwest, for example, is a steelhead that was tagged in the Clearwater River, Idaho, in April 2003. A year and a half later, it was caught off the southern Kuril Islands near Japan. The most direct route between those two points as the crow flies, as they say is 4,200 miles. Imagine fish that make it that far then turn around and travel back to their home streams in........Go to the Animal-science-blog (Added on 11/15/2007 10:10:19 PM)

Primary rain forest is irreplaceable

As world leaders prepare to discuss conservation-friendly carbon credits in Bali and a regional initiative threatens a new wave of deforestation in the South American tropics, new research from the University of East Anglia and Brazil's Goeldi Museum highlights once again the irreplaceable importance of primary rain forest. Working in the north-eastern Brazilian Amazon the international team of researchers undertook the single-largest........Go to the Plant-science-blog (Added on 11/14/2007 9:36:26 PM)

Differences between humans and chimps

Scientists are closer to understanding why humans differ so greatly from chimpanzees in the way they look, behave, think, and fight off disease, despite having genes that are nearly 99% identical. Innovative research from the University of Torontos Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research has uncovered potential new explanations for these glaring differences. In comparing brain and heart tissue from humans and chimpanzees, U of T........Go to the Animal-science-blog (Added on 11/14/2007 8:55:00 PM)

Flying Lemurs Are the Closest Relatives of Primates

While the human species is unquestionably a member of the primate group, the identity of the next closest group to primates within the entire class of living mammals has been hotly debated. Now, new molecular and genomic data gathered by a team including Webb Miller, a professor of biology and computer science and engineering at Penn State, has shown that the colugos -- nicknamed the flying lemurs -- is the closest group to the primates. A........Go to the Animal-science-blog (Added on 11/13/2007 9:58:46 PM)

"Time-sharing" birds key to evolutionary mystery

Whereas most birds are sole proprietors of their nests, some tropical species "time share" together - a discovery that helps clear up a 150-year-old evolutionary mystery, says Biology professor Vicki Friesen. The Queen's-led international study confirms one of Charles Darwin's more controversial theories - first put forward in 1859 and since disputed by a number of experts - that different species can arise, unhindered, in the same place.........Go to the Animal-science-blog (Added on 11/13/2007 8:58:41 PM)

Repellents between dusk and bedtime

Using insect repellent in addition to insecticide treated bednets (ITNs) has been shown to provide greater protection against malaria in areas where mosquitoes feed in the early evening. The findings of a study carried out by the team based at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and working in collaboration with the National Bureau of Malaria Control at the Ministry of Health in La Paz, Bolivia, are published recently in the........Go to the Animal-science-blog (Added on 11/12/2007 9:45:42 PM)

Global Warming Is Melting Soft Coral

Tel Aviv University Professor (and alumnus) Hudi Benayahu, head of TAU's Porter School of Environmental Studies, has observed that soft corals, an integral and important part of reef environments, are simply melting and wasting away. And Prof. Benayahu believes this could mean a global marine catastrophe. Environmental stress, says Benayahu, is damaging the symbiotic relationship between soft corals and the microscopic symbiotic algae living........Go to the Biology-blog (Added on 11/12/2007 9:37:48 PM)

Helping to fight widespread potato disease

Researchers have made a key discovery into the genetics of the bacteria that causes blackleg, an economically damaging disease of potatoes, that could lead to new ways to fight the disease. The scientists at the University of Cambridge, funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), observed that if a particular gene is inactivated in the bacterium Erwinia carotovora, its ability to damage the plant and cause........Go to the Plant-science-blog (Added on 11/7/2007 8:07:40 PM)

Tropical importance in biodiversity

Even a group of shellfish that appear to violate the overarching pattern of global biodiversity actually follows the same biological rules as other marine organisms, confirming a general theory for the spread of life on Earth. The University of Chicago's David Jablonski and colleagues present this finding this week in the advanced online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "There's more of everything in the........Go to the Animal-science-blog (Added on 11/7/2007 7:14:01 PM)

Worms take the sniff test

Buttery popcorn or fresh green vegetables? Your answer tells a lot about you. Now, researchers say that the way that thousands of tiny worms have answered that question likely reveals a lot about you and your brain, too. In the experiment at the University of Rochester Medical Center, worms that are hermaphrodites (with characteristics of both females and males) went for the buttery smell, while the males the other of the two sexes in........Go to the Animal-science-blog (Added on 11/5/2007 9:06:02 PM)

Potential to double tiger numbers in South Asia

Scientists at the Wildlife Conservation Society and other institutions declare that improvements in management of existing protected areas in South Asia could double the number of tigers currently existing in the region. The study appears in the most recent edition of the journal Biological Conservation. Specifically, the study examined 157 reserves throughout the Indian subcontinentcomprising India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Nepal. It........Go to the Animal-science-blog (Added on 11/5/2007 8:21:55 PM)

The Watchdogs of chromosome-segregation

There is always a cell from the outset, no matter if the cell is from worms, frogs or human beings. To begin with, a cell creates identical copies of chromosomes during the cell cycle, which are then distributed to existing daughter cells. The multiplication to a multi-cellular organism is made possible through the subsequent cell division or "cytokinesis", a marvel of nature. Through these means the daughter cells receive a complete batch of........Go to the Biology-blog (Added on 11/1/2007 8:12:04 PM)

Defensive Frog

It''s a frog. A very small frog.But you better not mess around with it.(via Arbroath)........Go to the Animal-science-blog (Added on 11/1/2007 7:10:12 PM)

Why do so many species live in tropical forests and coral reefs?

The latest development in a major debate over a controversial hypothesis of biodiversity and species abundance is the subject of a paper would be reported in the 1 November 2007 issue of the journal Nature. The authors report good agreement between the species richness of two of the world's most vulnerable ecosystems -- tropical forests and coral reefs -- and a simple mathematical model building on the so-called "neutral theory of........Go to the Animal-science-blog (Added on 10/31/2007 9:10:14 PM)

Coral reefs will be permanently damaged

Coral reefs could be damaged beyond repair, unless we change the way we manage the marine environment. New research by the Universities of Exeter and California Davis, published recently (1 November 2007) in Nature, shows how damaged Caribbean reefs will continue to decline over the next 50 years. Coral reefs conjure up images of rich, colourful ecosystems yet an increasing number of reefs are becoming unhealthy and overrun by seaweed. The........Go to the Biology-blog (Added on 10/31/2007 9:04:13 PM)

Domestic cat genome sequenced

A report that appears in the scientific journal Genome Research (www.genome.org) details the first assembly, annotation, and comparative analysis of the domestic cat genome (Felis catus). The DNA of a 4-year-old Abyssinian cat named Cinnamon, whose well-documented lineage can be traced back several generations to Sweden, has been sequenced. Cinnamon is one of several mammals that are currently being analyzed using light (two hundred........Go to the Biology-blog (Added on 10/31/2007 8:56:27 PM)

Genes Behind Alcohol Sensitivity in Fruit Flies

Some fruit flies can drink others under the table. Now, researchers at North Carolina State University have a few more genetic clues behind why some flies are more sensitive to alcohol than others. And the results might lead to more knowledge about alcoholism in humans. After genetically modifying fruit flies to be either extremely sensitive or extremely resistant to alcohol - lightweights or lushes - the NC State researchers observed........Go to the Biology-blog (Added on 10/31/2007 7:17:33 PM)

Speed plays crucial role

Scientists at MIT studying the architecture of proteins have finally explained why computer models of proteins' behavior under mechanical duress differ dramatically from experimental observations. This work could have vast implications in bioengineering and medical research by advancing our understanding of the relationship between structure and function in these basic building blocks of life. In a paper published as the cover article of the........Go to the Biology-blog (Added on 10/30/2007 10:26:17 PM)

Underestimation of frog numbers causes concern

Frogs are vanishing from all the world's ecosystems with unprecedented speed. It is thought that more than 100 species have died out since 1980 alone. In a paper reported in the online, open-access journal PLoS ONE, a team of experts, including scientists from the University of Canterbury, says the number of species has been strongly underestimated and they are calling for action. The scientists from France and New Zealand collected and........Go to the Animal-science-blog (Added on 10/30/2007 10:16:19 PM)

Fluorescence in Key Marine Creature

Fluorescent proteins found in nature have been employed in a variety of scientific research purposes, from markers for tracing molecules in biomedicine to probes for testing environmental quality. Until now, such proteins have been identified mostly in jellyfish and corals, leading to the belief that the capacity for fluorescence in animals is exclusive to such primitive creatures. Researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San........Go to the Biology-blog (Added on 10/30/2007 9:57:11 PM)