Insights into Biology

Happy Holidays!

I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season.

I'll be posting again in the New Year.

With the New Year Nearly Here...

Science has released their top 10 breakthroughs for 2008 (keep reading to see all 10).

More Than Scaffolding

The H3 Histone: Not just for structure anymore - it's also critical for DNA Methylation.

Cancer-Causing Instability

The genome sequence of a breast cancer cell line shows heavily rearranged and disordered genes, and broken DNA repair machinery:

"It's like a computer program that has become buggy and transcends into something dangerous... It makes the cell escape normal controls on cell proliferation."

Tell Us Something We Don't Know

Princeton researchers have shown that sugar can be addictive (at least in rats).

Creating Prions

Scientists creating prions is very interesting and a little scary:

A worldwide group of scientists has created an infectious prion disease in a mouse model, in a step that may help unravel the mystery of this progressive disease that affects the nervous system in humans and animals. The research team... also discovered that changing the structure of the prion protein by altering just two nucleic acids leads to a fatal neurological disorder in mice.

Simple Rules

Researchers have developed some simple rules to explain gene expression variation.

When a Fungus Matters

One of the more surprising titles for a Life Sciences news release: Sex Life of Killer Fungus Finally Revealed

It neatly implies that people have been waiting on the edge of their seats to find out about the sex life of a killer fungus. Or, to put it another way, insert "Britney Spears" for "Killer Fungus" and you have a tabloid title.

While not as sensational as the title suggests, it's a fairly interesting article:

Biologists ... have announced a major breakthrough in our understanding of the sex life of a microscopic fungus which is a major cause of death in immune deficient patients and also a cause of severe asthma. ... First described 145 years ago this killer fungus, until now, had no known sexual cycle and was only thought to reproduce by production of asexual spores. But researchers ... have finally been able to induce sexual reproduction in this potentially lethal pathogen

Sounds More Disgusting than It Is

Researchers find how an experimental drug explodes TB bacteria from the inside out.