UPTON, NY-The first-ever images of the protein complex that unwinds, splits, and copies double-stranded DNA reveal something rather different from the standard textbook view. The electron microscope images, created by scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory with partners from Stony Brook University and Rockefeller University, offer new insight into how this molecular machinery functions, including new possibilities about its role in DNA "quality control" and cell differentiation.
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DNA replication is essential to all life, yet many basic mechanisms in that process remain unknown to scientists. The structure of the replisome--a block of proteins responsible for unwinding the DNA helix and then creating duplicate helices for cell division--is one such mystery.
Now, for the first time, a team of researchers from The Rockefeller University, Brookhaven National Laboratory, and Stony Brook University has revealed that vital complex's molecular architecture. And to their surprise, it does not look as they had expected.
Bats in northeast China are infected with the fungus that causes white-nose syndrome, a deadly disease that has decimated bat populations in North America since it first appeared in upstate New York in 2006. A team of American and Chinese researchers found the fungus in caves where bats hibernate and found bats infected with the fungus.
Although infected bats had lesions characteristic of the disease and similar to lesions seen in North American bats, the researchers do not know the extent to which Chinese bat species are affected by the disease.
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- By sequencing its genome, scientists are homing in on the genes and genetic pathways that allow the juicy pineapple plant to thrive in water-limited environments. The new findings, reported in the journal Nature Genetics, also open a new window on the complicated evolutionary history of grasses like sorghum and rice, which share a distant ancestor with pineapple.
Talking about sex with parents, especially mothers, had an effect on safer sex behavior among adolescents, especially girls, according to an article published online by JAMA Pediatrics.
A reduced risk for childhood asthma at the age of six was associated with exposure to dogs or farm animals during a child's first year of life, according to an article published online by JAMA Pediatrics.
Childhood asthma is a global health concern. A number of environmental factors have been associated with either increased or decreased risk of asthma.
Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin have developed a nanoscale machine made of DNA that can randomly walk in any direction across bumpy surfaces. Future applications of such a DNA walker might include a cancer detector that could roam the human body searching for cancerous cells and tagging them for medical imaging or drug targeting.
In a discovery that holds promise for future drug development, scientists have detected for the first time how nature performs an impressive trick to produce key chemicals similar to those in drugs that fight malaria, bacterial infections and cancer.
Primary investigator Yan Jessie Zhang, an associate professor of molecular biosciences at The University of Texas at Austin, Pinghua Liu from Boston University and Lixin Zhang from the Chinese Academy of Science report their findings today in the journal Nature.
CAMBRIDGE, MA -- MIT engineers have designed magnetic protein nanoparticles that can be used to track cells or to monitor interactions within cells. The particles, described today in Nature Communications, are an enhanced version of a naturally occurring, weakly magnetic protein called ferritin.
WASHINGTON, D.C., November 2, 2015 - Climate change hasn't been kind to the Arctic Circle, as evidenced by the decrease of seasonal ice in the area and the encroachment of temperate species. One way to monitor impacts to the ecosystem is by observing the changes in occurrence or distribution of sea birds and marine mammals.
We tend to think of the immune system as guarding us against bacteria, viruses and assorted foreign invaders, but this system has some other surprising roles. Weizmann Institute researchers have now identified a small subtype of immune cells that appears to prevent metabolic syndrome: obesity, high blood pressure, and high levels of blood sugar and cholesterol.
It's getting closer to winter, and all of a sudden you need a new HVAC system that'll cost $5,000. You've got the money in a savings account. Will you spend that money, or pay with a high-interest credit card instead? According to a study in the Journal of Marketing Research, if you have earmarked those savings for a "responsible" purpose, you are probably going to preserve them and pull out the costly plastic.
When Toyota or Chrysler recalls one of its models, the news spreads all over social media, with most consumers bad-mouthing the recalled model. But it turns out that the bad-mouthing is not limited to the offending vehicles. According to a new study in the Journal of Marketing Research, much of the negative chatter extends or "spills over" to rival models, impugning them in the process as well.
Are you are one of the many consumers who prefer domestic to foreign products, even when the domestic products are lower in quality and cost more? Why is that? As a new study in the Journal of International Marketing explains, you are exhibiting what is known as consumer ethnocentrism--a thirty-year-old concept, says the study, whose conceptual boundaries and measurement need to be extended.
In an age in which personal data is routinely collected about each and every one of us, we are in-creasingly remote-controlled. "Many choices that people consider their own are already determined by algorithms," argue Prof. Dirk Helbing and Dr. Evangelos Pournaras from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) in a commentary published in the latest edition of the science journal Nature.