Poisonous cure: Toxic fungi may hold secrets to tackling deadly diseases

Take two poisonous mushrooms, and call me in the morning, said no doctor ever. Credit: Photo by G.L. Kohuth Take two poisonous mushrooms, and call me in the morning. While no doctor would ever write this prescription, toxic fungi may hold the secrets to tackling deadly diseases. A team of Michigan State University scientists has discovered an enzyme that is the key to the lethal potency of

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Native fungus suggested as another tool for restoring ghostly whitebark pine forests

Siberian slippery jack is a native fungus that may help in the effort to restore whitebark pine forests. Credit: Cathy Cripps Cathy Cripps doesn't seem to worry about the grizzly bears and black bears that watch her work, but she is concerned about the ghosts and skeletons she encounters. The ghosts are whitebark pine forests that have been devastated by mountain pine beetles and white pi

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Bacteria could be rich source for making terpenes

Odoriferous terpene metabolites: A phylogenetic tree of terpene synthases shows the synthases (bold face or underlined) found by researchers in Japan and at Brown University using bacterial sequences. Credit: Image courtesy of Brown University If you've ever enjoyed the scent of a pine forest or sniffed a freshly cut basil leaf, then you're familiar with terpenes. The compounds are responsibl

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Mother's diet affects the 'silencing' of her child's genes

An infant from the Gambia. Credit: Felicia Webb A mother's diet before conception can permanently affect how her child's genes function, according to a study published in Nature Communications. The first such evidence of the effect in humans opens up the possibility that a mother's diet before pregnancy could permanently affect many aspects of her children's lifelong health. Researcher

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Identifying gene-enhancers: New technique

Diane Dickel is the lead author of Nature Methods paper describing a new technique for identifying gene enhancers in the genomes of humans and other mammals. Credit: Roy Kaltschmidt An international team led by researchers with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has developed a new technique for identifying gene enhancers -- sequences of DNA that act to amplify the expre

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Gene silencing instructions acquired through 'molecular memory' tags on chromatin

Epigenetic inheritance is a two-step process, with a heritable molecular memory first forming to maintain a chromatin state required later for actual silencing of a genetic locus. Credit: Craig Pikaard and Todd Blevins Scientists at Indiana University have unlocked one of the mysteries of modern genetics: how acquired traits can be passed between generations in a process called epigenetic inh

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Mysteries of 'molecular machines' revealed: Phenix software uses X-ray diffraction spots to produce 3-D image

This is a membrane protein called cysZ, imaged in 3 dimensions with Phenix software using data that could not previously be analyzed. Credit: Los Alamos National Laboratory Scientists are making it easier for pharmaceutical companies and researchers to see the detailed inner workings of molecular machines. 'Inside each cell in our bodies and inside every bacterium and virus are tiny but c

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In search of the origin of our brain

Nervous system in Nematostella vectensis embryos with different nerve cell populations, where the different neurons (here in green, blue and magenta) evidence asymmetry. Credit: Hiroshi Watanabe, Thomas Holstein / Nature Communication 5:5536, Macmillan Publishers Limited While searching for the origin of our brain, biologists at Heidelberg University have gained new insights into the evolutio

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Mechanics of cells' long-range communication modeled by researchers

As fibrosis progresses, "bridges" of extracellular matrix appear between cells. Credit: Image courtesy of University of Pennsylvania Interdisciplinary research at the University of Pennsylvania is showing how cells interact over long distances within fibrous tissue, like that associated with many diseases of the liver, lungs and other organs. By developing mathematical models of how the c

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Revolutionizing genome engineering

Streptococcus pyogenes is one of the bacteria in which the HZI scientists have studied the CRISPR-Cas system. Credit: © HZI / M. Rohde Genome engineering with the RNA-guided CRISPR-Cas9 system in animals and plants is changing biology. It is easier to use and more efficient than other genetic engineering tools, thus it is already being applied in laboratories all over the world just a few yea

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Squid supplies blueprint for printable thermoplastics

This is a whimsical image of a squid creating 3-D printed devices. Credit: Adriás Bago Squid, what is it good for? You can eat it and you can make ink or dye from it, and now a Penn State team of researchers is using it to make a thermoplastic that can be used in 3-D printing. "Most of the companies looking into this type of material have focused on synthetic plastics," said Melik C. Demire

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Scrapie could breach the species barrier

Scrapie is a neurodegenerative disease that has been known for centuries and which affects sheep and goats. Credit: INRA/Florent Giffard INRA scientists have shown for the first time that the pathogens responsible for scrapie in small ruminants (prions) have the potential to convert the human prion protein from a healthy state to a pathological state. In mice models reproducing the human spec

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The business-minded veterinarian

Veterinarians are needed not only to treat our pets and livestock, but in a broader context, to help with zoonotic disease maintenance. Credit: Image courtesy of Kansas State University Research and Extension Animals can teach us more about the human body than we might realize. Crack open New York Times bestseller "Zoobiquity," and you'll learn about a human cardiologist's experiences at the

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