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Because emotions enhance memory processes and music evokes strong emotions, music could be involved in forming memories, either about pieces of music or about episodes and information associated with particula...
A recent study in BMC Pharmacology presents a network of drugs and the therapies in which they are used. Network approaches open new ways of predicting novel drug targets and overcoming the cellular robustness th...
Transcription and metabolite analysis is a powerful way to reveal physiological shifts in response to environmental pollution. Recent studies on earthworms, including one in BMC Biology, show that the type of pol...
Insulin-like growth factor (IGF) binding proteins provide a layer of complexity to the insulin/IGF signaling system in mammals, but only now, in a recent study in Journal of Biology, has one such protein been fun...
The transfer-messenger ribonucleoprotein (tmRNP), which is composed of RNA and a small protein, small protein B (SmpB), recycles ribosomes that are stalled on broken mRNAs lacking stop codons and tags the part...
The reconstruction of complete animal life cycles is sometimes a considerable problem, even though the knowledge of the full life cycle may have far-reaching evolutionary implications. A new study published in BM...
Retinal neurons receive input from other cells via synapses and the position of these synapses on the neurons reflects the retinal regions from which information is received. A new study in Neural Development est...
The geographic mosaic theory is fast becoming a unifying framework for coevolutionary studies. A recent experimental study of interactions between pines and mycorrhizal fungi in BMC Biology is the first to rigoro...
Substantial molecular evidence indicates that tree-shrews, colugos and primates cluster together on the mammalian phylogenetic tree. Previously, a sister-group relationship between colugos and primates seemed ...
Cancer treatment with a variety of chemotherapeutic agents often is associated with delayed adverse neurological consequences. Despite their clinical importance, almost nothing is known about the basis for suc...
Chemotherapy adversely affects cognitive function both acutely and chronically, but little is known about the underlying mechanisms. A new study shows that short-term chemotherapy causes not only acute injury ...
Insulin and insulin-like growth factors (IGFs) signal through a highly conserved pathway and control growth and metabolism in both vertebrates and invertebrates. In mammals, insulin-like growth factor binding ...
Comparative morphological and developmental studies, including a recent comparative study of tooth development among the Afrotherian mammals, are indicating the types of genetic mechanisms responsible for the ...
Systematic mapping of genetic-interaction networks will provide an essential foundation for understanding complex genetic disorders, mechanisms of genetic buffering and principles of robustness and evolvabilit...
The precise role of the O-fucosyltransferase Ofut1 in Notch-receptor trafficking has remained controversial. A recent study sheds new light on the non-catalytic activity of Ofut1 and provides further evidence tha...
Breast cancers differ in many ways, such as in their cell of origin, the molecular alterations causing them and the susceptibility and defenses of the patient, and this makes it difficult to give the most appr...
Long interspersed nuclear elements (LINEs) are among the most successful parasitic genetic sequences in higher organisms. Recent work has discovered many instances of LINE incorporation into exons, reminding u...
In the spinal cord, developing motor neurons extend their axons into the periphery while their cell bodies remain within the motor columns in the spinal cord. Two recent papers show that this partitioning invo...
The dissection of biological pathways and of the molecular basis of disease requires devices to analyze simultaneously a staggering number of protein isoforms in a given cell under given conditions. Such devic...
Peptide aptamers are combinatorial recognition proteins that were introduced more than ten years ago. They have since found many applications in fundamental and therapeutic research, including their recent use...
A new study reveals that, in response to oxidative stress, organisms can redirect their metabolic flux from glycolysis to the pentose phosphate pathway, the pathway that provides the reducing power for the mai...
Eukaryotic cells have evolved various response mechanisms to counteract the deleterious consequences of oxidative stress. Among these processes, metabolic alterations seem to play an important role.
DNA studies are revealing the extent of hidden, or cryptic, biodiversity. Two new studies challenge paradigms about cryptic biodiversity and highlight the importance of adding a historical and biogeographic di...
A recent study revealing geographical and environmental barriers to gene flow in the harbour porpoise shows the great potential of 'landscape genetics' when applied to marine organisms.
Understanding gene function and genetic relationships is fundamental to our efforts to better understand biological systems. Previous studies systematically describing genetic interactions on a global scale ha...
Cell growth underlies many key cellular and developmental processes, yet a limited number of studies have been carried out on cell-growth regulation. Comprehensive studies at the transcriptional, proteomic and...
The effect of changing growth rates on the transcriptome, proteome and metabolome has been systematically studied. Measurements made under varying nutrient conditions, corresponding to biochemical pathways tha...
In animals with heteromorphic sex chromosomes, dosage compensation of sex-chromosome genes is thought to be critical for species survival. Diverse molecular mechanisms have evolved to effectively balance the e...
Mechanisms to compensate for dosage differences of genes on sex chromosomes are widespread in animals and have been thought to be critical for viability. However, in birds, compensation is inefficient, implyin...
Chemotherapy in cancer patients can be associated with serious short- and long-term adverse neurological effects, such as leukoencephalopathy and cognitive impairment, even when therapy is delivered systemical...
Cranial radiotherapy is known to have adverse effects on intelligence. A new study shows that chemotherapy is also toxic to the central nervous system, especially to neural progenitor cells and oligodendrocyte...
Secondary-ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) is an important tool for investigating isotopic composition in the chemical and materials sciences, but its use in biology has been limited by technical considerations. M...
Biological materials are morphologically and chemically complex. A quantitative imaging tool is now available that can produce chemical, and even metabolic, information from morphological features as small as ...
Body size is controlled by mechanisms that terminate growth when the individual reaches a species-specific size. In insects, it is a pulse of ecdysone at the end of larval life that causes the larva to stop fe...
One of the least understood aspects of animal development – the determination of body size – is currently the subject of intense scrutiny. A new study employs a modeling approach to expose the factors that mat...
The Ras/Raf/MEK/ERK signaling pathway is one of the best understood signal routes in cells. Recent studies add complexity to this cascade by indicating that the two ERK kinases, ERK1 (p44ERK1) and ERK2 (p42ERK2),...
The closely related mitogen-activated protein kinases ERK1 and ERK2 have now been shown to have opposing roles in Ras-mediated cell proliferation. I propose that dimerization of these highly related protein ki...
The mitogen-activated protein (MAP) kinases p44ERK1 and p42ERK2 are crucial components of the regulatory machinery underlying normal and malignant cell proliferation. A currently accepted model maintains that ERK...
The study of complex biological networks and prediction of gene function has been enabled by high-throughput (HTP) methods for detection of genetic and protein interactions. Sparse coverage in HTP datasets may...
A systematic curation of the literature on Saccharomyces cerevisiae has yielded a comprehensive collection of experimentally observed interactions. This new resource augments current views of the topological stru...
The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans has been used extensively to identify the genetic requirements for proper nervous system development and function. Key to this process is the direction of vesicles to the growi...
Proteins such as UNC-76 that associate with kinesin motors are important in directing neurite extension. A small Caenorhabditis elegans coiled-coil protein, UNC-69, has now been shown to interact with UNC-76 and ...
Simultaneous suppression of glial scarring and a general enhancement of axonal outgrowth has now been accomplished in an adult rat model of spinal cord transection. Transplantation of a novel astrocyte cell ty...
Transplantation of embryonic stem or neural progenitor cells is an attractive strategy for repair of the injured central nervous system. Transplantation of these cells alone to acute spinal cord injuries has n...
Dendritic cells (DCs) are central to the initiation and regulation of the adaptive immune response during infection. Modulation of DC function may therefore allow evasion of the immune system by pathogens. Sig...
The capacity of malarial infection to suppress the patient's immune responses both to the parasite and to other antigens has long puzzled researchers. A prime suspect, the parasite-produced pigment hemozoin, h...
Dosage compensation equalizes gene dosage between males and females, but its role in balancing expression between the X chromosome and the autosomes may be far more important. Now, DNA microarrays have shown e...
Gene-expression analysis provides evidence for dosage compensation of the X chromosome in flies, mice and worms.