Free Republic

Susan Lindquist has challenged conventional thinking on how misfolded proteins drive disease and may power evolution. But she still finds that criticism stings. On a frigid winter's morning in 1992, Susan Lindquist, then a biologist at the University of Chicago in Illinois, trudged through the snow to the campus's intellectual-property office to share an unconventional idea for a cancer drug. A protein that she had been working on, Hsp90, guides misfolded proteins into their proper conformation. But it also applies its talents to misfolded mutant proteins in tumour cells, activating them and helping cancer to advance. Lindquist suspected that blocking...

New study brings to light physiological, cognitive differences of political left and right From cable TV news pundits to red-meat speeches in Iowa and New Hampshire, our nation's deep political stereotypes are on full display: Conservatives paint self-indulgent liberals as insufferably absent on urgent national issues, while liberals say fear-mongering conservatives are fixated on exaggerated dangers to the country. A new study from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln suggests there are biological truths to such broad brushstrokes. In a series of experiments, researchers closely monitored physiological reactions and eye movements of study participants when shown combinations of both pleasant and unpleasant...

PDF version Imagine a one-celled organism the size of a mango. It's not science fiction, but fact: scientists have cataloged dozens of giant one-celled creatures, around 4 inches (10 centimeters), in the deep abysses of the world's oceans. But recent exploration of the Mariana Trench has uncovered the deepest record yet of the one-celled behemoths, known as xenophyophores. Found at 6.6 miles beneath the ocean's surface, the xenophyophores beats the previous record by nearly two miles. The Mariana Trench xenophyophores were discovered by dropcams, developed by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and National Geographic, which are unmanned HD cameras 'dropped'...

Researchers say they have created the first ever animal with artificial information in its genetic code. The technique, they say, could give biologists "atom-by-atom control" over the molecules in living organisms. One expert the BBC spoke to agrees, saying the technique would be seized upon by "the entire biology community".The work by a Cambridge team, which used nematode worms, appears in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.The worms - from the species Caenorhabditis elegans - are 1mm long, with just a thousand cells in their transparent bodies.What makes the newly created animals different is that their genetic code has...

In 2007, a little known creature called a tardigrade became the first animal to survive exposure to space. It prevailed over sub-zero temperatures, unrelenting solar winds and an oxygen-deprived space vacuum. On Monday, this microscopic cosmonaut has once again hitched a ride into space on the Nasa shuttle Endeavour. Its mission: to help scientists understand more about how this so-called "hardiest animal on Earth" can survive for short periods off it. Tardigrades join other microscopic organisms selected to be part of a project into extreme survival. Shuttle Endeavour Endeavour climbs into the sky on Monday Project Biokis is sponsored by...

A genetics research group working in a lab in Kansas, has succeeded in creating a new species of lizard by mating two distinct species of North American Whiptails, both native to New Mexico. The offspring, all females are not only fertile, but can reproduce by laying eggs that don't need to be fertilized, which means, they actually clone themselves. Scientists have known for years that some species exist due to interspecies mating, the whiptail lizards have provided proof of that; they’ve been creating new species themselves for at least several hundred thousand years. What’s new is the process being manipulated...

Scientists are reporting discovery of an environmentally friendly way to make a key industrial material -- used in products ranging from paints to diapers -- from a renewable raw material without touching the traditional pricey and increasingly scarce petroleum-based starting material. Their report on a new catalyst for making acrylic acid appears in ACS Catalysis.Weijie Ji, Chak-Tong Au, and colleagues note that acrylic acid is essential for making paints, adhesives, textiles, leather treatments, and hundreds of other products. Global demand for the colorless liquid totals about 4 million tons annually. Acrylic acid is typically made from propylene obtained from petroleum....

When a happy young couple says “I do,” their marriage is contingent on their performing a specific sexual act. If they want to make their marriage real, they must consummate it. And that means that the meaning of marriage lies in the possibility of procreation. A marriage unconsummated is not a marriage. It is nullified, as though the ceremony had never happened. To become real, a marriage requires the possibility of conception. It does not require conception. Failure to conceive has never been grounds for nullification. Older, presumably infertile, couples are allowed to marry because if they had performed the...

Genetic researchers may have resolved a long-standing dispute by proving there are two species of African elephant.Savannah and forest elephants have been separated for at least three million years, they say, and are as distinct from each other as Asian elephants are from the extinct woolly mammoth. The researchers also made what they say are the first sequences of nuclear DNA from the extinct American mastodon. > "The divergence of the two species took place around the time of the divergence of the Asian elephant and woolly mammoths," said Michi Hofreiter, a specialist in ancient DNA at the UK's York...

The White House on Thursday said the controversial field of synthetic biology, or manipulating the DNA of organisms to forge new life forms, poses limited risks and should be allowed to proceed. An expert panel convened by President Barack Obama advised vigilance and self-regulation as scientists seeks ways to create new organisms that could spark useful innovations in clean energy, pollution control and medicine. The Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues "concluded that synthetic biology is capable of significant but limited achievements posing limited risks," it said in its first report. "Future developments may raise further objections, but...

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"