Posts in the Biology Category at NetMassimo Blog, Page 41

Cobs of corn with caryopses of different colors due to the activity of transposons

A research could explain why “jumping genes” don’t kill us

Massimo Luciani June 23, 2013 1

A team of researchers led by scientists at the University of Nottingham, England, proposed an explanation for the fact that transposons, the so-called jumping genes that can be found in most living organisms, don’t kill their hosts.

A second immune system made by bacteriophage viruses

Massimo Luciani May 23, 2013 0

A group of researchers at San Diego State University led by microbial ecologist Forest Rohwer found that the mucus that exist in the body of almost all the animals in various organs contain a type of bacteriophage (informally phage) viruses (image ©Adenosine) that can function as a second immune system that procects from infections.

Christian de Duve in 2012 (Photo Julien Doornaert)

R.I.P. Christian de Duve

Massimo Luciani May 7, 2013 1

Last Saturday the biochemist Christian de Duve died in his home in Nethen, Belgium. His health had deteriorated and a few weeks ago he decided to request euthanasia, which is legal in Belgium. In 1974, Christian de Duve received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine together with Albert Claude and George E. Palade for their discoveries concerning the structural and functional organization of the cell.

A speciman of Latimeria Chalumnae, a modern Coelacanth

The DNA of a coelacanth, the most famous living fossil, has been sequenced

Massimo Luciani April 25, 2013 1

An international team coordinated by the Broad Institute, a research center affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard University, announced they have completed the sequencing of the genome of a coelacanth, a fish that was thought to be extinct until 1938, when a living specimen was found.

Australopithecus sediba, aka Malapa Hominin 1 (MH1) left, Lucy (AL 288-1) (Centre), and Malapa Hominin 2 (MH2) right

A skeleton of Australopithecus sediba has been reconstructed

Massimo Luciani April 16, 2013 0

A team of scientists has reconstructed a skeleton of Australopithecus sediba, a hominid that lived about two million years ago, putting together the bones of some partial skeletons found in 2008 in Malapa, about 45 km (about 30 miles) from the capital city of South Africa, Johannesburg.