Shining Light On The Workings Of Cells

http://www.npr.org/2011/07/28/138784047/shining-light-literally-on-the-workings-of-cells?sc=fb&cc=fp

Scientists would like to know more about how cells work. But seeing what's happening inside a cell isn't easy. It's dark in there, and even if you shine a light, many of the critical chemical reactions are invisible.

Now, a team of researchers has found a way to reveal the invisible by attaching what amounts to a reflective tag to a chemical called RNA, a close relative of DNA. Molecules made of RNA have a variety of important jobs inside cells and frequently, doing those jobs requires the RNA to shuttle from one part of the cell to another.

Jaffrey says being able to see how the RNA is moving inside cells should answer a lot of important questions about what the chunks of RNA inside cells are up to, like: "When do they move, in response to what signals in cells? And how is their movement affected in diseases?" This information "will give us more insight into how those RNAs are linked to the disease process," Jaffrey says.

Lighting up cells.

Modular Structure Of Proteins Allows Evolution To Move Forward

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/07/110726190059.htm

Changes in a short protein domain can alter a whole signaling network involved in organ development – this is the key result of a comparative study of the development of the egg laying organ in two species of nematodes. However, the outward appearance of the organ remains the same in both species. The study provides support for the theory of developmental systems drift – a theory maintaining that, over the course of evolution, analogous organs of different species can retain the same shape and function while the regulative mechanisms underlying their development can change considerably.

Proteins can act differently while organs look the same.

Newly Discovered Gene Sheds Light On Evolution

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/07/110725111531.htm

A chance discovery of a genetic mutation in wild barley that grows in Israel's Judean Desert, in the course of a doctoral study at the University of Haifa, has led to an international study deciphering evolution of life on land. The study has been published in the journal PNAS.

"Life on Earth began in the water, and in order for plants to rise above water to live on land, they had to develop a cuticle membrane that would protect them from uncontrolled evaporation and dehydration. "In our study we discovered a completely new gene that along with other genes contributes to the formation of this cuticle,"

The Chinese doctoral student Guoxiong Chen found a mutation of wild barley in the Judean Desert that was significantly smaller than regular wild barley. It was found that this mutation causes an abnormal increase in water loss because of a disruption in the production of the plant's cutin that is secreted from the epidermal cells and is a component in the plant's cuticle that reduces water loss and prevents the plant's dehydration.

A critical step in plant evolution discovered.

Biology's New Supermodel

http://the-scientist.com/2011/07/20/biology’s-new-supermodel/

Move over mice. Human induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells are making strides to become the next best thing in translational research—disease-specific human cells grown in a dish. Using a variety of approaches, researchers have generated stem cells from mature adult cells of disease-afflicted patients and subsequently differentiated them into the various tissue types involved in the disease.

The strategy is proving particularly valuable for neurodegenerative diseases, in which it is not easy to safely and ethically extract affected cells of the brain. Instead, researchers can remove more accessible cells, such as those of the skin, regress them into a pluripotent state, and then re-differentiate them into neurons. Furthermore, iPS cells can be expanded in culture and/or frozen for years, providing an unlimited supply of cells from a single patient that can be used to create any cell types needed for the study of a particular disease, now or in the future.

Seems ethical and effective.

Stop The First Legal Bear Hunt In Nevada History

http://ida.convio.net/site/MessageViewer/&printer_friendly=1?em_id=19641.0&dlv_id=22001

Black bears have been protected in the state of Nevada since 1929. Now, for the first time in Nevada history, the Nevada Wildlife Commission has adopted a regulation to establish a bear hunt in the Lake Tahoe Basin. The bear hunt is scheduled to begin on August 20, 2011 and continue through December 31, 2011.

The Nevada Department of Wildlife (NDOW) has not proven there are sufficient numbers of bears to support a hunt. Their own management plan states the bear population has been stable at around 200-300 bears since 1900. The population is not growing, but bear habitat is being continually degraded by residential development, drought and fire. This proposed hunt threatens the bear population.

Please contact the NWC immediately. We have provided a sample letter below, which you can copy-and-paste into an e-mail as is, or re-write to better reflect your thoughts.
Please send your email to: Suzanne Scourby, Wildlife Commission Executive Assistant, sscourby@ndow.org.

Please Help! Their population is in danger!

Extinction Rider

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jamie-rappaport-clark/extinction-rider-puts-us-_b_907321.html

Next week, the U.S. House of Representatives plans to pass an ill-conceived budget bill for the Interior Department that would paralyze our nation's programs for protecting imperiled plants and animals. A provision included by Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), and approved by the Appropriations Committee on July 12, would block crucial life-saving protections for more than 260 "candidate species" currently awaiting listing decisions under the Endangered Species Act.

The Extinction Rider, if passed, would prevent the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service from taking further action to save not only the wolverine and the lesser prairie chicken, but also the Pacific walrus, the red knot shorebird, the New England cottontail rabbit, the Sonoran desert tortoise, and hundreds of other species that need our help to survive.

This bill must be stopped!

Collaboration Encourages Equal Sharing in Children but Not in Chimpanzees

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/07/110720142007.htm

Children as young as three years of age share toy rewards equally with a peer, but only when both collaborated in order to gain them. Katharina Hamann with an international team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, Harvard University and the Michigan State University found that sharing in children that young is a pure collaborative phenomenon: when kids received rewards not cooperatively but as a windfall, or worked individually next to one another, they kept the majority of toys for themselves. One of humans' closest living relatives, chimpanzees, did not show this connection between sharing resources and collaborative efforts. 

Kids seem to know whats fair. If only more adults knew.