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Snail shells can spiral to the left (sinistral) or to the right (dextral), as determined by a single gene, and a new study has found the advantage of being in the minority sinistral group: they survive predation by snakes much better than dextral snails. The effect of this advantage is so great they could separate into a distinct species. Mating between sinistral and dextral snails is almost impossible because their genitals are on opposite sides of their bodies. In the large Satsuma snails, for example, mating takes place face-to-face. All snails have both male and female reproductive organs, and when...

London: For the first time, scientists have discovered an "assassin" protein which attacks and kills rogue cells to protect the human immune system, a breakthrough that can lead to new treatments for a host of diseases, including cancer, malaria and diabetes. Using powerful electron microscopes, a team of Australian and British scientists found how the protein, called perforin, adopts a unique mechanism of punching holes in the cells that have become cancerous or infected by viruses. The the ten-year study, published in journal Nature, is the first to show how perforin plays an important role of cleaning wayward cells that...

A few scientists noticed in the late 1960s that the marine bacteria Vibrio fischeri appeared to coordinate among themselves the production of chemicals that produced bioluminescence, waiting until a certain number of them were in the neighborhood before firing up their light-making machinery. This behavior was eventually dubbed “quorum sensing.” It was one of the first in what has turned out to be a long list of ways in which bacteria talk to each other and to other organisms.

It may be a shot in the dark, but freezing sperm is one of the last chances to save the hellbender, North America's biggest salamander, conservationists say. Hellbenders—also known as snot otters and devil dogs—have dwindled throughout their range, which once encompassed streams from northeastern Arkansas to New York. The 2.5-foot-long (0.7-meter-long) amphibians have declined by 80 to 90 percent in most of their traditional watersheds in recent decades, and healthy populations now haunt only isolated pockets of southern Appalachia (see map) and Pennsylvania, said Dale McGinnity, curator of reptiles at Nashville Zoo. All of the states in the hellbender's...

Last week, a federal district court judge in northern California issued an injunction against planting biotech sugar beets next year. Why? He accepted the activist argument that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) must issue a full environmental impact statement (EIS) under the National Environmental Policy Act before permitting the improved sugar beets to be grown. An EIS is required when a federal government agency engages in actions that might be "significantly affecting the quality of the human environment." So how are biotech sugar beets (already approved by the USDA, mind you) significantly affecting the human environment? Activists at the...

Scientists have stumbled across the first example of a photosynthetic organism living inside a vertebrate's cells. The discovery is a surprise because the adaptive immune systems of vertebrates generally destroy foreign biological material. In this case, however, a symbiotic alga seems to be surviving unchallenged — and might be giving its host a solar-powered metabolic boost. Algae cohabit with salamander embryos in their eggs — and inside their cells.T. LEVIN/PHOTOLIBRARY.COM The embryos of the spotted salamander (Ambystoma maculatum) have long been known to enjoy a mutualistic relationship with the single-celled alga Oophila amblystomatis. The salamanders' viridescent eggs are coloured by...

Santa Cruz police are working with the FBI to investigate the vandalism of a car belonging to a University of California at Santa Cruz researcher on Sunday morning. The spouse of the researcher, whose name is being withheld, found the car at about 11 a.m. Sunday with its brake lines and cables to the emergency braking system cut, police said. The damage had left the braking system inoperable. Officers responded to the victim's home in the 1200 block of Laurent Street and after speaking with the 55-year-old researcher, determined the motive behind the vandalism may be related to the victim's...

Fired Calif. professor exonerated in settlement of lawsuit against San Jose college district Case settles after court affirms teachers’ First Amendment rights in the classroom Thursday, July 22, 2010, 12:00 AM (MST) | ADF Media Relations | 480-444-0020 SAN JOSE, Calif. — Alliance Defense Fund attorneys have reached a settlement with the San Jose/Evergreen Community College District in a lawsuit filed on behalf of a biology professor. Professor June Sheldon was fired after objectively answering a student’s in-class question simply because a different student claimed to be “offended” by her answer, even though it comported with the official class curriculum...

Long before TV's campy Fantasy Island, the isolation of island communities has touched an exotic and magical core in us. Darwin's fascination with the Galapagos island chain and the evolution of its plant and animal life is just one example. Think of the extensive lore surrounding island-bred creatures like Komodo dragons, dwarf elephants, and Hobbit-sized humans. Conventional wisdom has it that they -- and a horde of monster-sized insects -- are all products of island evolution. But are they? Dr. Shai Meiri of Tel Aviv University's Department of Zoology says "yes," they are a product of evolution, but nothing more...

07 June 2010 "AQ IN NORTHERN IRAQ: SEEKING A CHEMIST OR BIOLOGIST"

Heralding a potential new era in biology, scientists for the first time have created a synthetic cell, completely controlled by man-made genetic instructions, researchers at the private J. Craig Venter Institute announced Thursday. "We call it the first synthetic cell," said genomics pioneer Craig Venter, who oversaw the project. "These are very much real cells." Created at a cost of $40 million, this experimental one-cell organism, which can reproduce, opens the way to the manipulation of life on a previously unattainable scale, several researchers and ethics experts said. Scientists have been altering DNA piecemeal for a generation, producing a menagerie...

Don't let fears about frankenmicrobes halt promising research. Better medicines, carbon neutral fuels, cheaper food, and a cleaner environment—who could be against that? Well, quite a few people, as it turns out. Last week, a research team led by private human genome sequencer J. Craig Venter announced that they had created the world’s first synthetic self-replicating bacteria. Among other things, synthetic biologists are aiming to create a set of standardized biological parts that can be mixed and matched the way off-the-shelf microchips, hard drives, and screens can be combined to create a computer. The goal is to produce novel organisms...

"Some people think that my life began at birth, but my life's journey began long before I was born."

The principal of Oakwood Elementary School was put on administrative leave Friday as school officials continued their investigation of plastic human fetus dolls given to students by an employee. It was not known if Principal Sheila Tillett Holas knew about the dolls or approved the distribution, The Virginia-Pilot reports. The employee who gave the students the dolls was put on administrative leave Thursday. Elementary students given fetus dolls 12:25 p.m. A Virginia school employee was place on administrative leave Thursday after reports that the worker distributed plastic human fetus dolls to students at an elementary school. The Virginian-Pilot reports that...

Signature of Controversy is a new e-book that counter-argues to criticism of Stephen Meyer’s book Signature in the Cell. It consists of various essays by David Berlinski, David Klinghoffer, Casey Luskin, Paul Nelson, Jay Richards, Richard Sternberg and Stephen Meyer. Here is a paragraph from the intro: Published in 2009, Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design is recognized as establishing one of the strongest pillars underlying the argument for intelligent design. To call the book fascinating and important is an understatement. No less interesting in its way, however, was the critical response and it is...

The Male Brain. By Louann Brizendine, M.D. New York: Broadway Books, 2010. www.crownpublishing.com. 271 pp. $24.99. Psychiatrist Louann Brizendine, currently of the University of California, San Francisco and formerly of Harvard Medical School, has published the predictable followup to her bestselling book The Female Brain. This may be the most accessible book I have ever read that has slightly more than half its length taken up with appendices, notes, references, and the index. In 135 easy-to-read pages, Brizendine lays out the basic functioning of the male brain. Despite the number of books addressing these general topics, the author stands...

US scientists have demonstrated the existence of undiscovered chemical pathways to an important class of bioactive lipids in the nervous system. Endocannabinoids are lipid messengers that play a key role in both central and peripheral tissues, where they participate in diverse physiological processes including appetite, pain-sensation, mood, and memory. Unlike other neurotransmitters such as amino acids and neuropeptides, they are not water soluble so cannot be stored in the body and are made on-demand from phospholipid precursors involving complex multiple pathways. A complete understanding of these mechanisms is crucial to understanding their effects in mammalian physiology, explains Benjamin Cravatt and Gabriel Simon at...

Deep under the Mediterranean Sea small animals have been discovered that live their entire lives without oxygen and surrounded by 'poisonous' sulphides. Researchers writing in the open access journal BMC Biology report the existence of multicellular organisms (new members of the group Loricifera), showing that they are alive, metabolically active, and apparently reproducing in spite of a complete absence of oxygen. Roberto Danovaro, from the Polytechnic University of Marche, Ancona, Italy, worked with a team of researchers to retrieve sediment samples from a deep hypersaline anoxic basin (DHABs) of the Mediterranean Sea and studied them for signs of life. "These...

ScienceDaily (Mar. 19, 2010) — Centuries ago, scientists began reducing the physics of the universe into a few, key laws described by a handful of parameters. Such simple descriptions have remained elusive for complex biological systems -- until now.Emory biophysicist Ilya Nemenman has identified parameters for several biochemical networks that distill the entire behavior of these systems into simple equivalent dynamics. The discovery may hold the potential to streamline the development of drugs and diagnostic tools, by simplifying the research models.

DEEP in your lungs, there's a battle raging. It's a warm, moist environment where the ever-opportunistic bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa has taken up residence. If your lungs are healthy, chances are the invader will be quickly dispatched. But in the mucus-clogged lungs of people with cystic fibrosis, the bacterium finds an ideal habitat. First, the microbes quietly multiply and then they suddenly switch their behaviour. A host of biochemical changes sticks the population of cells together, forming a gluey biofilm that even a potent cocktail of antibiotics struggles to shift. Microbes like P. aeruginosa were once thought of as disorganised renegades,...