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When chemists want to produce a lot of a substance — such as a newly designed drug — they often turn to catalysts, molecules that speed chemical reactions. Many jobs require highly specialized catalysts, and finding one in just the right shape to connect with certain molecules can be difficult. Natural catalysts, such as enzymes in the human body that help us digest food, get around this problem by shape-shifting to suit the task at hand.

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Each day, a staggering number of cells perform a feat that still amazes researchers with its complexity: they divide to produce perfect replicas of each other. The process is called mitosis, and an inability to control it is one of the hallmarks of cancer.

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A group of undergraduate students from the University of California San Diego have forged a new area of bioinformatics that may improve genomic and proteomic annotations and unlock a collection of stubborn biological mysteries. Their work will be published in the July issue of the journal Genome Research.

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Want to slow the signs of aging and live longer? New Saint Louis University research suggests cutting back on calories could be a promising strategy. Calorie restriction has long been shown to slow the aging process in rats and mice. While scientists do not know how calorie restriction affects the aging process in rodents, one popular hypothesis is that it slows aging by decreasing a thyroid hormone, triiodothyronine (T3), which then slows metabolism and tissue aging.

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We captured 687 adult and 1259 larval tiger salamanders (Ambystoma tigrinum), assessed individuals for gross malformations, and surveyed genetic variation among malformed and normal individuals using both cytoplasmic and nuclear markers. The overall frequency of adults with malformations was 0.078 compared to 0.081 in larval samples.

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Metabolomics aims to determine the totality of all small molecules of a cell or a tissue. The exponents of bioinformatics analyzed data collected in the framework of a pre-clinical metabolomics study in healthy and diabetic mice. In each case, a subgroup of the animals was treated with the diabetes drug RoziglitazoneTM.

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Climate warming will affect animals in many ways, including the sex of some species’ offspring. For tuatara, unique and ancient reptiles from New Zealand, warmer nest temperatures produce male-biased clutches. We predicted sex ratios and hatching times of tuatara clutches under future climate scenarios by linking egg development data with sophisticated models of soil microclimates.

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Do cuckoos effectively mimic their hosts? Here it is assessed from a host perspective whether the colour design of cuckoo eggs of different races maximizes matching for two favourite avian hosts. Secondly, it is assessed the role of nest luminosity on host perception of matching.

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Researchers at North Carolina State University have found that quantum dot nanoparticles can penetrate the skin if there is an abrasion, providing insight into potential workplace concerns for healthcare workers or individuals involved in the manufacturing of quantum dots or doing research on potential biomedical applications of the tiny nanoparticles.

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Two Texas A&M University researchers have developed a computational tool that will help scientists more accurately study complex units of clustered genes, called operons, in bacteria. The tool, which allows scientists to analyze many bacterial genomes at once, is more accurate than previous methods because it starts from experimentally validated data instead of from statistical predictions, they say.

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