Mammalian embryos are unlike those of any other organism as they must grow within the mother’s body. While other animal embryos grow outside the mother, their embryonic cells can get right to work accepting assignments, such as head, tail or vital organ. By contrast, mammalian embryos must first choose between forming the placenta or creating the baby.
Researchers from Scripps Research have discovered how the proteasome, which is made of protein complexes in the cell that breaks down damaged and unwanted proteins, converts energy into motion to unfold target proteins for recycling.
What is the proteasome?
The proteasome is a protein complex whose job is to break down and recycle proteins that have become damaged or are no longer required. It achieves this via a process called proteolysis, a chemical reaction that breaks the peptide bonds, thus allowing the target protein to be destroyed and broken down into its constituent parts, which become ready to be reused to make new proteins. The enzymes that facilitate this recycling process are known as proteases.
Eight genes linked to red hair have been discovered by scientists, helping to shed light on how redheads inherit their distinctive locks.
The Edinburgh University-led research has been described as the largest genetic study of hair colour to date.
It had been thought red hair was controlled by a single gene, MC1R, with versions passed on from both parents.
Medical research has taken a leap into the future as Russian scientists have managed to grow a mouse’s thyroid in zero gravity using a 3D bioprinter on the International Space Station (ISS). And human organs may be next in line.
The breakthrough device dubbed Organaut was delivered to the ISS by a Soyuz MS-11 spacecraft on December 3 by Expedition 58.
How atoms arrange themselves at the smallest scale was thought to follow a ‘drum-skin’ rule, but mathematicians have now found a simpler solution.
Atomic arrangements in different materials can provide a lot of information about the properties of materials, and what the potential is for altering what they can be used for.
However, where two materials touch – at their interface – complex interactions arise that make predicting the arrangement of atoms difficult.
MANILA, Philippines — Among the 2,729 teams in 200 locations all over the world who participated in the NASA Space Apps Challenge, an app made by Filipino innovators was nominated first time by NASA scientists and experts to become a finalist at the global level. Altogether, they will join the top 25 in competing for the six winners of the biggest hackathon in the universe.
The winning app seeking to communicate scientific data to fishermen even without Internet connection was made by IT professionals Revbrain G. Martin, Marie Jeddah Legaspi, and Julius Czar Torreda from team iNON, which stands for “It’s now or never.” Named ISDApp, from the Tagalog word “isda” meaning fish, it sends useful information to fishermen such as real-time weather, sunrise and sunset, wind speed, and cloud coverage to plan their fishing activities in catching more fish using the NASA GLOBE Observer app, a data collection from citizen scientists around the world used in concert with NASA satellite data to identify or communicate information, and educating the public about planet Earth. Fishermen will receive SMS notifications from the Amazon Web Services gateway while local government officials would manage their details using a smartphone app connected to the cloud. NASA scientists and experts consider this fisherfolk app made by Pinoys as one of the solutions “with the most potential to improve life on Earth or in the universe,” therefore nominated as global finalist for Galactic Impact.
Continue reading “First Pinoy app nominated as global finalist to the NASA Space Apps Challenge” »
The view of the world through any primate’s eyes is funnelled from the retina into the visual cortex, the various layers of which do the initial processing of incoming information. At first, it’s little more than pixels of dark or bright colours, but within 100 milliseconds the information zaps through a network of brain areas for further processing to generate a consciously recognized, 3D landscape with numerous objects moving around in it.
Doris Tsao mastered facial recognition in the brain. Now she’s looking to determine the neural code for everything we see. Doris Tsao mastered facial recognition in the brain. Now she’s looking to determine the neural code for everything we see.
Being in space can have weird and sometimes harmful effects on the human body, and we’ll have to work through those issues if we’re to make it out to Mars and beyond, and stay healthy.
But it looks like we have finally found one feature of the human body that’s untroubled by microgravity — and it’s a part of our all-important immune system.
Based on a study of blood samples from International Space Station (ISS) crew members, a few months in space don’t affect B-cell immunity — the number of white blood cells in our bodies ready to fight off infection by producing antibodies.
Continue reading “We Finally Have Found One Part of The Human Body Not Damaged by Space Travel” »
Populations of indigenous people in southern Africa carry a gene that causes lighter skin, and scientists have now identified the rapid evolution of this gene in recent human history.
The gene that causes lighter skin pigmentation, SLC24A5, was introduced from eastern African to southern African populations just 2,000 years ago. Strong positive selection caused this gene to rise in frequency among some KhoeSan populations.
UC Davis anthropologist Brenna Henn and colleagues have shown that a gene for lighter skin spread rapidly among people in southern Africa in the last 2,000 years.
