Posts tagged biology

11 Inaugural winners receive US$3 million each for Groundbreaking Achievements in Life Science Research.

Smithsonian News — “The water in Lake Vida has been cut off from its surroundings for roughly 2,800 years, nowhere near the 15 million for Lake Vostok or other Antarctic subglacial lakes. But, the fact that things are alive in Lake Vida at all further extends the idea that where there is water, there is life.”

From Nature News about an article in Science.

Misfolded protein transmits Parkinson’s from cell to cell—Link between cell death and protein clumps opens pathway to possible treatment.

A team led by Virginia Lee, a neurobiologist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, injected a misfolded synthetic version of the protein α-synuclein into the brains of normal mice and saw the key characteristics of Parkinson’s disease develop and progressively worsen. The study, published today in Science, suggests that the disease is spread from one nerve cell to another by the malformed protein, rather than arising spontaneously in the cells.

As reported by the Guradian.

“Researchers have discovered how very large whales co-ordinate their jaw muscles and bones to take gigantic mouthfuls of prey.”  The full paper at Nature is here, subscription probably required. 

Now you know.

“The swallows will still come back to Capistrano, albatrosses will wing their way across vast oceans, and homing pigeons will still arrive at home. But scientists are no longer sure how they do it.” From the Chronicle of Higher Ed.