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UC Irvine biologists have discovered that fats within cells store a class of proteins with potent antibacterial activity, revealing a previously unknown type of immune system response that targets and kills bacterial infections. Steven Gross, UCI professor of developmental & cell biology, and colleagues identified this novel intercellular role of histone proteins in fruit flies, and it could herald a new approach to fighting bacterial growth within cells. The study appears today in eLife, a new peer-reviewed, open-access journal supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Max Planck Society and the Wellcome Trust. "We found that these histone proteins...

Enlarge Image Zooming in. This diagram illustrates a chromosome in ever-greater detail, as the ENCODE project drilled down to DNA to study the functional elements of the genome. Credit: ENCODE project The human genome—the sum total of hereditary information in a person—contains a lot more than the protein-coding genes teenagers learn about in school, a massive international project has found. When researchers decided to sequence the human genome in the late 1990s, they were focused on finding those traditional genes so as to identify all the proteins necessary for life. Each gene was thought to be a discrete piece...

In a breakthrough effort for computational biology, the world's first complete computer model of an organism has been completed, Stanford researchers reported last week in the journal Cell. A team led by Markus Covert, assistant professor of bioengineering, used data from more than 900 scientific papers to account for every molecular interaction that takes place in the life cycle of Mycoplasma genitalium, the world's smallest free-living bacterium. ....

Pro-Darwin consensus doesn't rule out intelligent design --snip-- (CNN) -- While we officially celebrate the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin's "On the Origin of Species" on November 24, celebrations of Darwin's legacy have actually been building in intensity for several years. Darwin is not just an important 19th century scientific thinker. Increasingly, he is a cultural icon. Darwin is the subject of adulation that teeters on the edge of hero worship, expressed in everything from scholarly seminars and lecture series to best-selling new atheist tracts like those by Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. The atheists claim that...

ScienceDaily: “Slowing Evolution to Stop Drug Resistance” --snip-- For years, evolutionists have pointed to antibiotic resistance as proof of evolution in action. The argument often amounts to this (in simplified form): the fact that certain organisms grow resistant to certain antibiotics is evidence for the evolutionary idea that all animals must have descended from a single ancestor. Collapsing the argument does make it seem a bit silly, but that’s our point. We certainly don’t want to belittle the very real threat of dangerous organisms becoming immune to the best drugs we now have (though the vast majority of microbes are...

Not to mince words - the modern synthesis is gone --snip-- "The discovery of pervasive HGT and the overall dynamics of the genetic universe destroys not only the tree of life as we knew it but also another central tenet of the modern synthesis inherited from Darwin, namely gradualism. In a world dominated by HGT, gene duplication, gene loss and such momentous events as endosymbiosis, the idea of evolution being driven primarily by infinitesimal heritable changes in the Darwinian tradition has become untenable." ...

Signature in the Cell makes 2009 list of top ten bestselling science books Today Amazon.com announced their bestselling books of 2009 and Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design (HarperOne) by Dr. Stephen C. Meyer made the top ten in the science category. According to Amazon.com, books on its 2009 list of best sellers are “[r]anked according to customer orders through October. Only books published for the first time in 2009 are eligible.” The book's publisher, HarperOne, reports that the book is entering its fifth printing in as many months, and continues to sell strongly both...

Molecular biologist Michael Behe described a system made of several interacting parts, whereby the removal of one part would disrupt the functioning of the whole, as irreducibly complex. Both creation scientists and intelligent design proponents highlight examples of irreducible complexity in their studies. The very structure of these systems--with their interdependent parts working all together or not at all--demands design, not chance. Nevertheless, a team of evolutionary molecular biologists think they may have refuted irreducible complexity. They recently studied the parts of a particular cellular machine involved in protein transport, claiming that it was actually reducible to its component parts...

Sir Ambrose Fleming: Father of Modern Electronics --snip-- Sir John Ambrose Fleming was a leader in the electronics revolution that changed the world. As a professor at a major university, he carefully researched the evidence for Darwinism, concluding that the theory is not supported by science. He also influenced hundreds of students to evaluate the evidence in science for Darwinism. An outstanding scientist and creationist, he played a significant role in the development and maturation of the early creation movement. As Travers and Muhr wrote, he "had an unusually long and active life," and his life changed the world as...

“Junk” DNA Discovered to Have Both Cellular and Microevolutionary Functions Evolutionists have long sought mechanisms for the origin of reproductive barriers between populations, mechanisms which are thought to be key to the formation of new species. A recent article in ScienceDaily finds that “Junk DNA” might be the “mechanism that prevents two species from reproducing.” Basically, so-called “junk”-DNA is involved in helping to package chromosomes in the cell. If two species have different “junk” DNA, then this prevents the proteins in the egg from properly packaging the chromosomes donated by the sperm. The organism does not develop properly. As the...

Experimental Data Force Researchers to Admit There’s “No Such Thing As Junk RNA” Originally, proponents of neo-Darwinian evolution lauded “junk” DNA as functionless genetic garbage that showed life is the result of blind and random mutational events. Then “junk” DNA was disproved by the discovery that the vast majority of DNA is being transcribed into RNA. Did the failure of this Darwinian assumption cause evolutionists to terminate their love affair with biological “junk”? Of course not. They just shifted their argument back, claiming that the cell is full of “junk RNA”—DNA that is being transcribed into RNA but still does...

Shuffling genetic information has long been framed as a biological mechanism that can generate variety as well as fuel evolution. However, new details of a common cellular genetic shuffling process called “crossing over” reveal a tightly controlled system that operates under strict parameters and requires highly specified cellular machinery. It is as if each generation was programmed to have variation, and that variation had strict limitations—limitations that would preclude Darwinian evolution...

Oct 20, 2009 — Every once in awhile it’s fun to look at what biochemists and biophysicists are discovering about the cell. Since you have several trillion of cells in your body, think about some of these cool cell tricks going on inside of you right now...

Darwin’s theory that species originate via the natural selection of natural variation is correct in principle but wrong in numerous aspects of application. Speciation is not the result of an unlimited naturalistic process but of an intelligently designed system of built-in variation that is limited in scope to switching ON and OFF permutations and combinations of the built-in components. Kirschner and Gerhart’s facilitated variation theory provides enormous potential for rearrangement of the built-in regulatory components but it cannot switch ON components that do not exist. When applied to the grass family, facilitated variation theory can account for the diversification of...

A DNA cutting tool that can manipulate human genomic DNA could ultimately find applications in gene therapy, say Japanese scientists.Makoto Komiyama, Narumi Shigi and colleagues at the University of Tokyo recently made the DNA cutter - ARCUT - and used it to cut bacterial DNA at one target site. Now they have shown that it can be tuned to cut human genomic DNA selectively and also to repair it."ARCUT's selectivity meant that the Tokyo team was able to use the cutter to target one site in human genomic DNA" ARCUT consists of a cerium(IV) complex which cuts the DNA and...

Researchers have developed a new way to see where the molecules are active Researchers have illuminated a once-hidden developmental process. A fluorescent signal pinpoints the activity of a protein in fruit flies, allowing researchers to see exactly when and where this protein does its job. “The idea of watching life at the molecular level within a cell in an intact organism is really fascinating,” says study coauthor Akira Chiba. The protein, called Cdc42, is present everywhere in the developing fruit fly and controls the production of genes, among other things. But Cdc42 is only active at certain times in certain...

New projects could tackle the genomics of species both critically endangered and already extinct. On the first weekend in April, a couple of dozen leading molecular biologists, conservationists and museum curators gathered at Pennsylvania State University in University Park to brainstorm about ways of harnessing the power of the latest molecular sequencing techniques to conservation goals."The cost of genome sequencing is falling at an extraordinary rate," says workshop co-organizer Stephan Schuster of Penn State University, who was a driving force behind the 2008 sequencing of a woolly-mammoth genome, the first complete genome of an extinct animal. "Now it is possible...

A buildup of chemical bonds on certain cancer-promoting genes, a process known as hypermethylation, is widely known to render cells cancerous by disrupting biological brakes on runaway growth. Now, Johns Hopkins scientists say the reverse process — demethylation — which wipes off those chemical bonds may also trigger more than half of all cancers. One potential consequence of the new research is that demethylating drugs now used to treat some cancers may actually cause new cancers as a side effect. "It's much too early to say for certain, but some patients could be at risk for additional primary tumors, and...

One of the current handicaps of cancer treatments is the difficulty of aiming these treatments at destroying malignant cells without killing healthy cells in the process. But a new study by McMaster University researchers has provided insight into how scientists might develop therapies and drugs that more carefully target cancer, while sparing normal healthy cells Mick Bhatia, scientific director of the McMaster Stem Cell and Cancer Research Institute in the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine, and his team of investigators have demonstrated – for the first time – the difference between normal stem cells and cancer stem cells in...

One day soon patients may spit in a cup, instead of bracing for a needle prick, when being tested for cancer, heart disease or diabetes. A major step in that direction is the cataloguing of the “complete” salivary proteome, a set of proteins in human ductal saliva, identified by a consortium of three research teams, according to an article published today in the Journal of Proteome Research. Replacing blood draws with saliva tests promises to make disease diagnosis, as well as the tracking of treatment efficacy, less invasive and costly. Saliva proteomics and diagnostics is part of a nationwide effort...